Cedar Falls, Ia (Northwest Iowa Now) – Saturday Morning, the IHSAA released the playoff pairings for the round of 32. Let’s react to the pairings and learn a little bit about the opponents on today’s Steven’s Take.

8-Player: West Bend-Mallard @ St. Mary’s (Remsen)

We saw this matchup back on September 13th and St. Mary’s dominated. We kind of knew someone would get St. Mary’s in either the round of 32 or round of 16 from our area, but I admit, I didn’t expect, and probably should’ve expected, West Bend-Mallard to get a rematch with the Hawks.

St. Mary’s may be one of the more slept on teams as far as the ranked groups go. They can hit you in a lot of ways with a lot of different guys. Offensively, Keaton Harpenau is awesome. He has 45 carries for 274 yards on the ground and 20 receptions for 330 yards receiving with 11 total Touchdowns. Harpenau compliments his quarterback and certified Touchdown machine Landon Waldscmitt well. Waldscmhitt has 1,225 yards of total offense with a whopping 28 total Touchdowns. If you thought Keaton Harpenau’s offensive numbers were great, his defensive numbers may be better. The senior has just under 30 tackles for the season and has picked off 6 passes.

8-Player: CAM @ GTRA

This is a tough draw for GTRA. Tough road trip for CAM as 2 and a half hours through not a whole lot, but the Cougars are a very strong team. Their two losses are to a couple of really good opponents in Audubon and Fremont-Mills. I expected GTRA to get central Iowa team or a North Central Iowa team, but the IHSAA tends to pair up southwest and northwest Iowa often so I’m not very surprised.

CAM runs the football very effectively with 1,822 yards on the ground combined. The quarterback Makade Paulsen leads that charge with 985 yards and 20 Touchdowns on the ground. He’s also thrown for 803 yards and 14 touchdowns, so they are still very capable if they need to go to the air. 3 players on their defense have double digits for tackles for loss in Collin Bower, Makade Paulsen, and Kegan Croghan. This isn’t a team that has gotten tested through the air very much this season, and that is something GTRA can possibly take advantage of.

Class A: Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn @ West Hancock

Welcome back to the playoffs HMS. The award is a matchup with the same team that ended two of your last 3 playoff runs. Much like 8-Player and St. Mary’s, we knew someone would get West Hancock, and it makes sense that it is the 3-5 team from Class A District 1.

I’ll admit, I am a huge fan of this West Hancock program. While most of the State’s top teams tend to be somewhere in the greater area of a bigger city, the Hawks remain what makes small school football great, just a few farm communities that come together and dominate at Football. It’s still very much the T formation running teams over for West Hancock. The Hawks have totaled 2,642 yards on the ground with 311 carries. Brady Bixel has charged for 1,012 yards and 25 Touchdowns on his own this season running the football. Nothing statistically jumps off the page about their defense, but they’re good. The last 5 opponents for West Hancock have only scored a combined 13 points.

Class A: Sibley-Ocheyedan @ Woodbury Central

This should be a very fun game. This Sibley-Ocheyedan team feels like the real deal as far as a team that can pick up a few wins in the playoffs, and Woodbury Central is a playoff regular who maybe hasn’t had the season they expected to. The Generals have one of the stronger records for a 3rd place team, and I bet the Wildcat faithful didn’t want to see them for the round of 32.

Woodbury Central is a very balanced team that is capable on both the ground and air. Jackson Verschoor is only a sophomore at the Quarterback position but has seemed to pick up where past quarterbacks left off for the Wildcats. He has completed 77 passes for 1,261 yards and 15 Touchdowns to only 2 interceptions. Pair that with his ability to scramble at 336 yards this season and a 1000-yard rusher in Zack Butler as his tailback, this team can hurt a defense in a lot of ways. Another Sophomore in Carter Wright highlights a defense that can get in the backfield well. Wright has 5 of his teams 10 sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss. The team in general have brought down 54 players behind the line of scrimmage this season.

Class A: Logan-Magnolia @ MMCRU

Last year, I was pretty confident in Class A District 1 teams against Class A District 8 teams in the playoffs and I was very incorrect. I like the matchups again this year, especially for MMCRU, so take that however you will with what we know.

This isn’t your fathers Logan-Magnolia Panthers. Maybe your father doesn’t know anything about the Logan-Magnolia Panthers. In case he doesn’t, they used to be a single wing team who exclusively ran the football. This team is a complete 180 to that. Ashton Pezulik, a sophomore quarterback has completed 98 of his 168 passes this year for 1,457 yards with 18 Touchdowns and 6 interceptions. Peszulik is the Panthers leading rusher as well with 241 yards. His favorite target is Wes Vana who has caught nearly a 3rd of Peszulik’s passes for 666 yards and 8 Touchdowns. Logan-Magnolia is 5-3 but are riding a 3-game winning streak coming into the Playoffs.

Class 1A: Sioux Central @ South Hamilton

Just a little under a two-hour drive for the Rebels to Jewell for this round of 32 matchup. This was one of those matchups I was close with in my Playoff projections last week ahead of Friday’s matchups. I had Sioux Central going to South Hardin not South Hamilton. I really don’t have a compass on this matchup because I am pretty unfamiliar with Class 1A District 7, which is unfortunate because two of our area teams have matchups with this District.

South Hamilton wants to only run the football. They have passed, but only 49 times this season and have a sub-50 percent completion percentage with a 2 to 6 Touchdown to Interception Ratio. Three different players on this Hawks team have over 500 yards rushing, each averaging over 5 yards per carry. The defense is shaky. Opposing offenses average 30.8 points per game. They don’t force much for losses of yards, so they’ve leaned on forcing turnovers, in which they have 14 this season.

Class 1A: Grand View Christian (Des Moines) @ Emmetsburg

The other area team playing a Class 1A District 7 opponent is Emmetsburg who will host Grand View Christian out of Des Moines. To see so few District 1 and District 2 teams is surprising but is a credit to how good the State believes the District 1 teams are, with two top 10 teams and a third who is fringe. Like I said before, District 7 is a bit of a mystery to me. Woodward-Granger is the dominant team in teh District which they absolutely shelled. I think these two 1A matchups in our area are probably the most interesting to me because of how little I know about District 7.

The Thunder throw the football 61 percent of the time and Junior Judah Lock, while pretty accurate completion percentage wise, throws a lot of interceptions. Of Locks 138 completions, 79 of them have gone to the two headed receiving monster of Brayden Hoben or Austin Jordan. Those two also account for 16 of Lock’s 18 passing Touchdowns. On the other side of the Football Brayden Hoben is all over the field. The Junior Linebacker has 65.5 tackles, 8 tackles for loss, 2 interceptions, and a fumble recovery.

Class 2A: Westen Christian (Hull) @ Okoboji

While Class 1A District 2 avoided District 1 because of ranked teams between the two Districts, Class 2A District 1 and District 2 were not given the same treatment, which is likely more due to location than anything else. Not a lot surprising against this matchup, but it’s one I really look forward to. District 2 may have the classes best team in Spirit Lake, but District 1 in the classes best District, and Western Christian is a big reason for that.

The Wolfpack lost their starting quarterback early in the year in Kaden VanRegenmorter, and had to turn to the Junior Landon DeStigter. DeStigter hasn’t missed a step though, completing just under 60% of his passes with 14 touchdowns and 4 interceptions for 1,418 yards. The defense is forcing 2 turnovers per contest. Teagen Visser has a fumble recovery and 2 interceptions in his Senior Year. Their season has been a very mixed bag, which is expected against their District where they finished in a 3-way tie for 2nd with Central Lyon/George-Little Rock and Cherokee. Out of everyone in their District, the Wolfpack defense put together the best effort against District Champ West Lyon, holding the Wildcats to their lowest point total of the year at 13.

Class 2A: Cherokee @ Spirit Lake

Our Only matchup where two area teams will face off. Not one team on Spirit Lake’s schedule has been able to slow down their offense. Algona just outscored it. Jaxon Paulsrud and Blake Lovell have an equal distribution of carries this season at 117 a piece and both are over 800 yards on the ground.