District 12 5A Finals
Tagged under: District 12, Gameday Hub
Anthony Franklin | November 19, 2021
Father Judge Crusaders enter this city title game with a 6-4 record with impressive wins over Boys Latin, William Penn Charter & Roman Catholic. They also gave CL 6A champion St. Joes Prep a scare in their CL regular season finale before falling 21-13. They were off last week which gave them time to rest and recover before they take on the Public League champions Imhotep Panthers. The Panthers z98-1)dismantled an previously undefeated Frankford team 44-0 and scored all their points in the first half of the game before sitting their starters the second half and playing with a running clock. Imhotep has blown past all their competition other than Northeast (14-0 win), La Salle (8-13 loss), DeMatha, Maryland (14-10 win) & Pittsburgh Central Catholic (12-6 win).
The Crusaders are a pass run dominating team as they have a dual threat QB Mike Van Horn who has thrown for 577 yards & 3 TDs in the air but also has amassed 993 yards and 18 TDs on the ground. Their second leading rusher is Eric Smith who has run for 554 yards. Eric also leads the Crusaders in receiving yards with 142 yards with 7 total TDs. Van Horn alone kept FJ in the game against SJP by rushing 40 times for 237 yards and 2 TDs in a narrow defeat. Defensively LB Mike Conway led the team with 57 tackles & 1 Interception and Fumble recovery. In the defensive backfield they were led by Liam Newhouse who recorded 2 interceptions. The defensive line was led by Shane Hartman who recorded 3 sacks while his line mate Jack Mulgrave recorded 2 sacks of his own while forcing and recovering a fumble with 23 tackles.
The Panthers are a dominant defense with an insane amount of depth on the line and secondary. Offensively they have a good amount of talent as well but occasionally against good defenses struggle to score which is expected. They dominated in PL play all season with only one game being decided less than 2 scores. The rest of their league games they blew opponents out leading to their star all American defensive lineman Keon Wylie & Enai White sitting most second half of games. Against Frankford they got outstanding coverage from defensive backs Jamir Reyes, Makhi Sutton & steady play from star LB Maurice Beverly. Offensively they were led by dual threat So. QB Mikal Davis who splits snaps with Sr. Sybree Williams-Rockeymore with a great 1-2 punch of running backs in So. Tre McCleod & Fr. Jabree Wallace-Coleman. Tep is well experienced in playing in the city title game while Judge makes its first appearance with Wood moving up to 6A.
Expect Imhotep to take use play action to try and catch the Crusaders off guard and use their deep threats on the outside to soften up the defense to free up running lanes. For Judge when they have the ball it’s obvious they want to run the ball with their QB getting most of the attempts. Imhotep has done a fairly good job this season shutting down opposing offense while Judge physically dominated Prep up front in their matchup a few weeks ago. Can Judge duplicate that against a strong Panthers DL, that will be the telling story. Both teams come in with good wins and Imhotep has one close early season loss to CL 6A runner-up LaSalle. I would venture to say Imhotep with their great DL will be able to limit the big rushes by FJ Quarterback thus shutting their offense down. This will result in an 14-17 point win for Imhotep.
Final score prediction: Imhotep 28-12 over Judge.
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