We've made it to the halfway point of the 2020 football season.
Unfortunately for Siloam Springs, reaching the midway point came with a thud this past Friday at Benton.
Siloam Springs ran into a buzz saw of a Benton team that won the game handily 42-0.
Most people in attendance, even those on the Benton side, did not expect that kind of a result. It was 35-0 at halftime and the entire second half was played with a running clock.
There were a lot of factors that played a part in the final score.
First, Benton got off to a great start and stayed hot on offense the entire first half. Benton scored on all five of its first half possessions. That's pretty good efficiency, folks.
Second, Siloam Springs had a turnover on its first possession and really never could get going on offense in this battle of maroon Panthers. The combination of those two led to the result we saw.
Now Siloam Springs is back at home this week facing an even bigger task in slowing down the No. 1-ranked Greenwood Bulldogs.
Former Greenwood legendary coach Rick Jones is a coaching consultant at the University of Missouri now, but the Bulldogs have not missed a beat under first-year coach Chris Young, who was on Jones' staff as offensive coordinator for several years.
Greenwood is 5-0 and 1-0 in conference after a 40-7 win at Mountain Home last week. (An aside here, for those of you who made the trip to Benton, can you imagine the drive from Greenwood to Mountain Home?)
Greenwood is short a conference game because their Week 4 game against Little Rock Parkview was canceled because of Parkview dealing with covid-19 quarantine. Instead, Greenwood wound up playing 7A Bentonville West and rolled to 35-28 victory. West had to rally to make the score that close.
Greenwood also has beaten Class 7A schools Fort Smith Southside 42-3 and Springdale Har-Ber 33-0. As always, the Bulldogs appear to be an outstanding football team.
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I know a lot of you had to be smiling this past Saturday night when the Arkansas Razorbacks held on for a 21-14 win at Mississippi State.
The Razorbacks snapped a 20-game Southeastern Conference losing streak and gave first-year head coach Sam Pittman his first win. The Razorbacks slowed down first-year State coach Mike Leach's air-raid offense, which torched my LSU Tigers for 625 passing yards the previous week.
It doesn't get any easier this week though as Arkansas is back on the road this Saturday at Auburn.
-- Graham Thomas is the managing editor for the Herald-Leader. He can be reached at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.