Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Bentonville West surging in second year of program
Before the season, I asked in a column if this was the year Bentonville West would overtake Bentonville High.
I should have asked if this was the year Bentonville West would overtake everybody else in the 7A-West Conference.
Wow. The West Wolverines are ferocious and plenty impressive, especially for a second-year program that doesn’t have a home stadium yet.
West improved to 7-0 with a decisive 37-19 victory on the road at Springdale Har-Ber. This is a Har-Ber team that was ranked No. 1 in the state two weeks ago before losing to Bentonville.
Those bad boys from Benton County are both 4-0 in conference play after Bentonville defeated Springdale High 49-21. Together, the Bentonville teams are 12-2 with losses by Bentonville High to Kansas City Rockhurst and Conway before the start of conference play.
If you’re looking ahead — and who isn’t? — Bentonville West and Bentonville High could both be undefeated in conference play when the teams meet in Week 10 at Tiger Stadium. Both teams will have games against Rogers High and Rogers Heritage over the next two weeks. Rogers High is 5-2 and Rogers Heritage is 1-6 on the season.
Before any coaches from Bentonville West accuse me of spreading “rat poison” — just as Nick Saban did to reporters for being too positive about Alabama — the Wolverines themselves should realize the work is far from over.
All they have to do is look at the results of two premier college games from Friday, when Syracuse stunned No. 2 Clemson 27-24 and No. 8 Washington State lost 37-3 to California. Yes, weird things happen in sports, especially on Friday the 13th.
West’s climb from 3-8 a year ago reminds me of HarBer, which reached the championship game in its second season in 2007. Har-Ber completed a massive turnaround from 2-8 and finished 10-3 that year after a 28-7 loss to Fayetteville in the state championship game.
Can the Wolverines follow a similar path to Little Rock? We’ll see, but there are plenty of roadblocks ahead, especially in the playoffs.
For now, we’ll applaud West for its unbeaten record and its 37-19 take-down over a HarBer team that whipped the Wolverines 45-0 in their first meeting last season. Everyone knows West can score but the Wolverines won Friday’s game the old-fashioned away — by playing defense.
West forced four turnovers and sacked Har-Ber quarterback Grant Allen nine times. The Wolverines also stopped Har-Ber on fourth down four times, including twice in the fourth quarter.
“Hats off to our defense, I couldn’t be more pleased,” West coach Bryan Pratt said after the game. “Everyone seems to think because of our offensive style of play that we don’t play defense very well. I think (Friday) we showed we can play defense.”
West will climb in the polls after being ranked as high as No. 5 in Class 7A to start the week. But polls mean very little once the playoffs start when one bad quarter, one bad series, or even one bad play can end the season.
Oh, and don’t count out Fayetteville, the two-time defending champions who improved to 3-4 with a 35-14 win over Rogers Heritage. Remember, it was the Bulldogs who won the state championship in 2007 after beginning the playoffs as a No. 4 seed from the 7A-West.
The sudden rise of West shows how quickly the landscape has changed in Northwest Arkansas. It wasn’t long ago when former 7A-West members Fort Smith Northside and Fort Smith Southside were top contenders and those two are a combined 3-11 to begin Week 8.
There’s a new invader from the north and they wear the navy blue and Vegas gold colors of the Bentonville West Wolverines.
Claws up.