NORMAN — How good is North? That’s the question today.
If the Timberwolves can play, then Norman High certainly can, too. If they can’t, well, the rest of NHS’ football season may be testament to how far confidence can take a team because the Tigers at least have that after Friday night’s 24-7 victory over Norman North.
What nobody can know until next week and the week after that and the week after that is what’s really in store for either of these teams, both still with plenty to prove.
The Tigers did everything winning required. Yet if they’d done anything less, they wouldn’t have. Because you could write a book about the opportunities NHS refused to take advantage of and another one about the self-inflicted wounds the Tigers were forced to overcome.
Unless you want to make the case the last three minutes were the real Tigers. That the real Tigers are a quick strike team, liable to have Zach Long find Jaime Myers for a 50-yard score with 2:51 to play when all Wilson had thrown for up to that point was 41 yards; or, 19 seconds later, after a pooch-kick-turned-onside-miracle gave the Tigers back the ball, a team that can just hand it to Donovan Roberts and expect him to take it up the middle and to the house.
An Orange and Black Nation, long No. 2 in this town in most things but girls basketball, can certainly hope.
They might just count on Roberts. The guy’s unbelievable. Like NHS’ own Adrian Peterson. No matter how long you stop him, he’ll get you in the end.
More likely, NHS fans better hope the kind of stepping up exemplified by a few of their Tigers is contagious.
Maybe, eventually, everybody stepping up will mean nobody stepping back … or taking an illegal motion penalty, or two, when David Nelson drops back to punt with the whole game on the line.
That was just one of the things the Tigers would have been killing themselves for if it hadn’t turned out well in the end.
Nelson actually dropped three different kicks inside the North 15 (two inside the 10). There was no rush on the first, but the second and third were just about blocked with the game, literally, resting on his foot.
“I was getting kind of nervous,” he said.
Not just in that moment did Nelson come through, but as part of a defense that was the only unit on the field for either team that approached domination.
Linebacker Greg Offenburger was a big part of that unit, too, a unit that watched its offense land enough big plays to put the game on ice more than once, only to do nothing with them over and over again.
“It felt like it was 10-7 forever,” Offenburger said, before going into a lot of stuff about focusing and executing and continuing to believe; pretty much all the things the winning team gets to talk about after just such a victory, the kind of victory the Tigers have had a heck of a time winning over the last few years.
But not this time.
For every time NHS was stopped in its tracks, the Tigers stopped the T-Wolves, too. Until NHS wasn’t stopped. Until Long found Myers, which really ended it, even if Nelson getting away that third-time-around punt pretty much ended it, North having gone nowhere fast for just about the whole night.
So, if North is good, you bet NHS is really good, too.
Whatever, it’s a good time to be a Tiger.
“This is going to change the atmosphere at school tremendously,” Offenburger said. “We’re going to have a great season.”
About a minute after he said it, the NHS students, hundreds of them, actually took a victory lap.
Deliverance.
How cool is that?
Maybe it’s the first of many.
We’ll see.
Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com
