By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — The 101st meeting between Ruston and Neville kicks off at 7 p.m. Friday at James Field at Hoss Garrett Stadium, and — for the first time in quite a while — it arrives in September.
The bitter rivalry has usually landed in October as a district game. This year it is the season opener, and it opens with both programs ranked No. 1 in the Louisiana Sports Writers Association poll — Ruston in Class 5A, Neville in Class 4A.
The Bearcats fought to a miracle victory last year after trailing by 17 points with less than nine minutes to play, winning the 100th meeting 41-38 on a touchdown in the final seconds at Bill Ruple Stadium in Monroe. The six meetings before that one were all decided by a single possession, by an average of 3.6 points. Neville leads the all-time series 51-46 with the teams tying three times over the course of nearly a century of a renowned rivalry.
“It is just a game,” Ruston head coach Jerrod Baugh said, as he emphasized the word “is.” “But I’m not crazy enough to think that it doesn’t mean something extra to really both communities. I think that just through the years, the back and forth, it’s one of the closest rivalries probably out there that has been back and forth. And yeah, some teams have gone on some runs, but really, I think it’s been pretty much back and forth, and it for sure has been since I’ve been the head coach here.”
What separates it from any other game against a good opponent, Baugh said, is how well the two sides know each other. Two or three coaches on his staff have worked at Neville, and Baugh’s relationship with Tigers head coach Mike Collins goes back years. He said the coaching staffs are close in the way they were a generation ago, when Chick Childress ran Ruston and Charlie Brown ran Neville.
The players are familiar with each other, too.
“The kids get to know each other,” Baugh said. “They’ve been playing each other since junior high. A lot of them, there’s all these travel teams and all that kind of stuff now, and some of them play on the same travel baseball team, AAU basketball and all of those things. And I just think it’s a very competitive football game that I think there’s a lot of mutual respect for each other for a lot of different reasons. So, yeah, it is a little bit different than just playing another good football team from somewhere where you don’t know those people.”
Friday also marks 10 years since Baugh’s first win as Ruston’s head coach, which came in a season opener at Neville.
“Who would have to tell you how stupid I was in not paying attention to anything,” Baugh said. “I didn’t know that they were on that 47- or 48-game home winning streak at the time or whatever it was. I had no clue. I just knew we were getting on a bus and going over there playing Neville. I was really oblivious to what took place then on that first win, but it was pretty special to do it against them. And then looking back on it, all of the things that were going on at that time, it was more special than what I even knew about at the time.”
Both teams come in off Bayou Jamb wins. Ruston scored seven touchdowns on 24 offensive plays in a 49-14 win over Evangel Christian Academy, with junior running back Dalen Powell carrying 10 times for 210 yards and three scores. Neville beat West Monroe 27-0 on the previous night.
Baugh said this week’s practices carried the usual first-game friction. The Bearcats had spent the last few days in August working on their own material without scout-team looks, and swapping to a game plan changed the structure of the week.
“To me, I don’t ever feel like we’re all the way prepared,” Baugh said. “I thought (Wednesday) was a little bit sloppy. It always takes place this week. It’s just not the optimal week, I guess, when you’re trying to get ready to play Neville. But you have to do that. I expect for our kids to be ready. They understand what this is all about, and I think most of our kids have enough game experience under stressful situations, playoff games, this game, that I know they won’t take it lightly and they’ll get themselves prepared. I just would have liked to have seen it be a little bit cleaner, but I always do. It’s never clean enough for me, so I’m pretty hard to please.”
His scouting report on Neville was shorter.
“It’s just another Neville football team,” Baugh said. “You always find yourself thinking, like, hey, I’ll be ready for this kid to graduate, and this one to graduate, and I’m ready to see that one go. And then here comes another one, the same thing, he’s just got a different name, but the same tools and all of that.”
Baugh pointed to senior quarterback Parker Robinson, the skill players around him and an offensive line he called underrated. Neville has leaned harder on the run this season, he said, and pairs it with run-pass option looks that stress a defense in both directions.
“Parker does a good job of deciding when he’s fixing to pull one out and throw it,” Baugh said. “And if they run the football effectively, that makes that even tougher, because you try to commit guys to the run and that leaves you kind of light in the coverage area. Defensively, same deal. Solid up front, good in the secondary, great linebacker level that runs to the football and tackles well. Same old story. You could probably take last year, copy and paste. And copy and paste is the same thing I said last year, but that’s the truth of the matter. That’s the way that it seems to reload every year for them.”
Neville has won 12 state championships to Ruston’s nine.
