Charleston Daily Mail

Wildcats need running game, too

Derek Taylor
Daily Mail Sportswriter



Monday September 17, 2007

Nitro has reached the Class AAA championship game twice in the past 10 years. Both times the Wildcats reached Wheeling Island Stadium the team did so while racking up gaudy offensive statistics.

J.R. House rewrote national record books as a passer in the team's 1998 title run. Running back Josh Culbertson broke nearly as many state rushing records when Coach Scott Tinsley's team finished as runner-up to Morgantown in 2005.

Tinsley, who orchestrated both offensive attacks – as a coordinator under former Coach Robert Burdette in '98 and as Head Coach two years ago – knows it's going to take a mixture of both elements for the team to make another deep playoff run this season.

"It's going to be crucial for us to have any success later on in our schedule and we try to get into the playoffs," Tinsley said of his team's ability to run the football after the Wildcats bashed their way to 233 rushing yards in a 49-21 win against Spring Valley on Saturday. "Teams are just too good and have a better ability to defend you if you're one-dimensional, unless you're just so overpowering that they can't stop you."

Nitro is now 2-1. Its passing game is still the most prolific in the Mountain State Athletic Conference, with quarterback Michael Scott having passed for 959 yards and nine touchdowns in three games. Tinsley, in his seventh year as Head Coach, said it's still not enough to carry his team through the entire season.

"The quality of the MSAC has gone up since I first got here," said Tinsley, who first joined the Nitro staff in 1995. "There are two things that have changed since I've been at Nitro. One, when we got here nobody was throwing the ball. When you faced a team it was really the only week they had to prepare for a spread offense.

"Now, you've got Huntington throwing the ball all over the place, Hurricane runs an offense with a lot of spread elements in it and even GW. They haven't abandoned the running game, but they throw it around more and run out of a lot of trip formations," said Tinsley.

The other major change Tinsley noted was the expansion of the MSAC to – over the years – include teams such as Parkersburg and Beckley.

"When I got here they were just getting the MSAC going and you didn't have teams like that. It was basically the old Kanawha Valley Conference," Tinsley said. "Now you get Parkersburg and Beckley in there, add in Huntington and Cabell Midland and it just makes it that much more difficult to find ways to beat people every week."

That said, Tinsley said he was thrilled with his team's ability to chew up clock with the running attack on Saturday. He said another change played into that ability.

"Only one of our offensive lineman played both ways this week," said Tinsley of keeping both offensive and defensive lines fresh. "We looked at it like ‘let’s make sure we can eat up some clock.' We're going to have to control the clock more and grind it out as the season goes on. I was really pleased."

Nitro plays at Lincoln County this week, but has games remaining against playoff hopefuls Capital (3-1), St. Albans (4-0) and Hurricane (3-0).