Gore plays Porter after honoring seniors

Class A No. 2 Gore looks to secure its third-straight unbeaten regular season Friday night inside K.G. Horn Stadium when the Pirates take on Porter Consolidated in a District A-8 contest.

Senior Night festivities begin at 6:15 a.m. and kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. The Pirates (5-0 in the district and 9-0 overall) recorded their seventh shutout (51-0) of the season last week at Haskell (2-3, 4-5) and Porter (1-4, 3-5) lost 56-13 to Pocola (4-2, 6-4).

“Porter is just another one of those teams that has kind of been up and down this year,” Gore head coach Brandon Tyler said. “They got beat pretty good by Pocola on Friday. I think they‚ve got some kids injured right now that may be done for the year. I know one lineman had broken his leg over there against Central, but they‚re going to play hard and they‚re going to line up and be fundamentally sound and do a lot of good things on offense and defense.”

Gore defeated Porter 74-14 in 2021. A few of Porter‚s key players on offense are running back Camden Price (6-foot, 205 pound junior), quarterback Bradyn Israel (6-4, 225, so.), wide receiver Billy Wisely (5-8, 160, jr.) and linemen Kyle Anderson (6-0, 260, sr.) and Miguel Chavez (6-4, 280, so.).

“Offensively they‚re going to be in a lot of two-tight, one-back H-formation, some of the same stuff that we do, and run counter and zone out of it and try to throw out of it a little bit as well.

“The quarterback‚s pretty good, No. 10 (Israel), and it seems like he kind of runs the show for them there and they kind of want the ball in his hands a little bit and he does a good job of running their offense.

“Keys for our defense are just getting lined up again and playing downhill, just continue to tackle and try to create some turnovers. I think we‚re doing a pretty good job of that right now and we‚ve just got to continue to build on that going into the playoffs next week.”

Some of Porter‚s standouts on defense are linebackers Camden Price and Bradyn Israel, defensive backs Billy Wisely and Mason Seaton (5-8, 150, sr.) and defensive linemen Kyle Anderson, Miguel Chavez, Easton Bobbit and Malachi Springsted.

“Porter‚s base defense is the 3-4,” Tyler said. “Nothing unusual about that but they‚re pretty aggressive out of it and they‚ll bring some pressure so there will be some stuff we‚re going to have to work on that Haskell kind of exposed a little bit but once we work on it and get it lined out we should be in good shape.

“They‚re going to play downhill. No. 10 will be at linebacker and they‚re pretty big up front, D-line wise. No. 52 (Bobbit), 55 (Springsted), 50 (Andersen) and 51 (Chavez) are their down guys and they‚re pretty big ole guys and hard to move in there and like to get after it pretty good.

“Sustaining drives again and just continue doing what we‚re doing are keys for our offense. Our offensive line has got to get better. I didn‚t think we played very well up front, especially early in the game Friday night when Haskell kind of hit us in the mouth. We didn‚t respond very well at first but finally as the game went on we got some things figured out with them. We‚ve just got to be more consistent up front and we‚ve got to go back to work and work on us this week and try to get better.”

Gore, the District A-8 champion, will host Fairland or Ketchum in a first-round playoff game next week.