The gist
- Gilmer (0-1) at Chapel Hill (0-1) on Friday, Sept. 4, 7:30 p.m., at Chapel Hill High School in Tyler. Non-district.
- The Buckeyes scored plenty at Pine Tree and lost anyway, 40-52. Forty points on the road is not the problem. Fifty-two allowed is.
- Chapel Hill has the opposite problem: the Bulldogs managed 14 in a 14-37 loss at Whitehouse the same night.
- Our lean: Gilmer, and by a comfortable number. But the defensive question does not get answered by beating a team that scored 14.
The matchup
Gilmer travels to Tyler on Friday night for a 7:30 kickoff against Chapel Hill. It is a non-district game, and it is the Buckeyes' second straight road trip to open the year. Gilmer does not play a home game until Kilgore comes to town on Friday, Sept. 11.
Both of these teams are 0-1, and both lost on the road on Aug. 27. That is the whole reason this game is interesting.
Gilmer lost 40-52 at Pine Tree in a game that was not a stinker on offense. You do not put up 40 on the road by accident. You also do not give up 52 by accident, and that is the number that followed the Buckeyes home. We wrote a Pine Tree preview before the opener; the thing we were watching turned out to be exactly the thing that broke.
Chapel Hill went the other direction, dropping a 14-37 decision at Whitehouse. Fourteen points. Against a defense that is good but not a wall.
So Friday sets up as a genuinely clean test: Gilmer's offense, which works, against a Chapel Hill offense that has not yet proven it can keep up. If the Buckeye defense is merely average, Gilmer wins this comfortably. If it is what it was in Week 1, this gets loud.
Key to the game: Gilmer's first defensive series. Not the first drive on offense, the first one on defense. A three-and-out settles a sideline that has been hearing about 52 points for a week. A quick Chapel Hill touchdown and you will feel the whole stadium tighten up.
Around the barbecue
The mood on smoaky's Gilmer-Chapel Hill thread is not panic, but it is not patience either. The argument Gilmer fans are actually having is not about talent. It is about the plan.
Several posters say plainly that they are taking Chapel Hill until they see the Buckeyes produce a coherent game plan, and the sharper end of the thread is aimed at the coaching staff rather than the players. Others are bracing for a track meet and would not blink at 60 to 70 combined points. Nobody over there is treating this as a walkover, which is a change in tone from a week ago.
Go back to the Pine Tree thread and it reads like a warning nobody wanted to take seriously. The most repeated worry going into the opener was the defense. It took one Thursday night for that to stop being a worry and start being a scoreboard.
Underneath it all is the argument that never really goes away in Upshur County: whether the expectations at Gilmer are a burden or the entire point of playing there. One regular cut through it in a way we liked:
"Pressure is when you can't pay ur bills or feed your family."
— a Gilmer fan on smoaky, on the state of the program
That is fan opinion, not reporting, and we are passing it along as such. But it is the right front porch.
Our take
1. Gilmer's problem is the fixable one. Scoring 40 points on the road is a skill you either have or you do not, and the Buckeyes have it. Stopping people is scheme, fits, and effort, and all three of those move a lot in seven days. Chapel Hill scoring 14 is the harder thing to fix in a week.
2. This is the softest landing spot Gilmer gets all year. Look at what is stacked up behind it: Kilgore, then Sulphur Springs, then Sunnyvale, and eventually Pleasant Grove, Pittsburg, Center and Carthage. If the defense does not get right on Friday against an offense that just put up 14, there is no kinder week coming to hide in.
3. The bold one: Gilmer wins this by double digits and it still does not settle a thing. Beating a 0-1 team that scored 14 is not evidence. The verdict on this Buckeye defense gets handed down on Sept. 11 with Kilgore in town, not tomorrow night in Tyler.
Gilmer is not a broken team. Gilmer is a team with one broken unit, playing the best possible opponent to practice against.
The pick: Gilmer, comfortably. The offense travels, Chapel Hill has not shown enough to win a shootout, and a team that just heard about 52 points for seven straight days usually shows up angry.
Buckeyes on the road again, Upshur County making the drive to Tyler one more time before the home opener. Lock in your picks before the deadline, and we will see you on the other side of Week 2.