High stakes for 'Jackets, Panthers in 6A-West tilt

Brandon Craig hasn't faced Sheridan on the football field yet, but the first-year Siloam Springs coach is familiar enough with the series and how important Friday's 6A-West Conference opener is.

"When you're in a conference as tough as ours, obviously with our history and their history, this is a game that both teams feel like they have to win to have a chance to get to the playoffs," Craig said. "I think both teams have this game circled on their calendar and understand that we need to win this game. We definitely understand that."

Siloam Springs and Sheridan have finished seventh and eighth, respectively, in the 6A-West the past two seasons. The Panthers' only conference victories in those two seasons came against the Yellowjackets -- 24-21 at home in 2016 and 31-24 at Sheridan in 2017.

With the addition of Little Rock Hall to the conference and losing Texarkana to Class 5A, the perception is that an opportunity has opened up for either the Panthers or Yellowjackets to compete for the sixth and final playoff spot. The top six teams from the league advance to the Class 6A playoffs.

The winner of Friday's 7 p.m. game at Panther Stadium between Sheridan and Siloam Springs will certainly be in the driver's seat.

Sheridan (1-2) won its season opener against Mountain Home 34-7 during Zero Week, but the Yellowjackets lost 42-0 at Searcy in Week 1 and fell at home against White Hall 50-27 last week.

"They have some talented kids," Craig said. "They work hard. They're a little bit like us. They're still searching for their identity and who they are. But overall we know we're going to be in for a big ballgame Friday night."

Sheridan is led offensively by junior running back Alden Lucas (5-10, 175), who has 44 carries for 272 yards and two touchdowns.

"(Lucas) does a lot of their work for them," Craig said. "He's a guy that we're definitely going to have to stop. He's definitely a talented kid and someone we have our eyes on for Friday night."

Junior quarterback Steph Thomas has completed 12 of 30 passes for 219 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.

Defensively, the Yellowjackets have nose guard Harper Thornton (5-8, 260), who could wreak havoc on the line of scrimmage.

"Defensively their nose guard is outstanding," Craig said. "He does a good job of leveraging, uses his hands well. Another type kid like we saw with Harrison, someone we're going to have to neutralize enough to create space for our running game. They've got some stand up kids in the back end that are skilled and do a good job. Overall they're a lot like us."

The Panthers, meanwhile, are coming off a 35-32 win at Class 7A Van Buren, where they trailed 14-0 before rallying to take a 35-24 lead and held on for the win.

Senior running back Kaiden Thrailkill paced the Panthers' ground game with a career-high 257 yards on 36 carries as the Panthers chewed up 332 rushing yards on 52 carries as a team. However, the Panthers' passing game remained grounded for the second straight week with 4 of 14 completions for 41 yards. In the past two weeks, the Panthers have passed for 81 yards combined on 10 of 33 passing.

Defensively the Panthers gave up 410 yards to Van Buren but the defense had two key stops in the fourth quarter. Defensively Primo Agbehi and Chase Chandler each had seven solo tackles, while Chandler had five assisted tackles. Taylor Pool had five solo tackles and eight assisted stops. Jackson Norberg had five solo tackles, three assisted and an interception, while sophomore Cam Collins also had an interception.

"I mean there's lots of stuff to improve on," Craig said. "We've got to keep working and getting better. We've got a lot of things we need to improve on. We're real excited over what's happened the past four or five weeks. Our kids have responded well to it. We had the one major letdown with the Harrison game (a 42-7 loss). Out of the four events we've been involved in, our kids have done really well in three of them and we're going to try to keep improving every week."

On special teams, the Panthers overcame some adversity when starting place kicker Christian Marroquin was injured when a Van Buren player stepped on his left foot on an extra point. Marroquin went on to take the following kickoff, but he missed the rest of the game. Senior Harrison Losh stepped in and hit all three of his extra point tries and caused some excitement on the kickoffs with his execution of pop up and sky kicks.

"(Van Buren) didn't handle it very well and it created some field position problems for us," Craig said. "It gave us a couple of opportunities to try to get to the football. We didn't, but at least it gave us an opportunity to get to the football, and Harry did a good job with that. We rep him every week in practice. He gets probably not exactly the same amount of reps as our starter, but he gets a lot of reps."