Well, the playoffs never disappoint – But round one this year managed to deliver more than most – We had massive upsets, dominant wins, championship contenders emerging … and even courtroom drama giving us some upcoming Tuesday night football…
FIRST DOWN: Waiting all Week For Tuesday Night
Everybody knows the details at this point in time relating to the Catholic Central vs Comstock Park round one matchup in division five – following a Temporary Restraining Order filed on behalf of CC after their initial removal from the 2026 postseason the matchup is now scheduled for tomorrow night. Michigan Sports Radio will be there LIVE Tuesday night for a game that will have as much intrigue as any that we have seen all year.
SECOND DOWN: 8 Over 1 in the Power T Battle
Grandville vs Howell wasn’t an average 1 vs 8 matchup – with both teams being two of the better teams in the state at running the Power T offense, it screamed a matchup that was going to be one you could throw the team’s respective 9-0 and 4-5 records out the window. And the 4-5 Bulldogs made a statement from the start, as coach Eric Stiegel’s team jumped out to a 16-0 lead early before leading by as much as 24 in the 4th quarter.
But Howell would charge all the way back to a 38-30 deficit and fall one yard and just a few seconds short of punching it into the endzone again and possibly sending the game to OT. Grandville was led by three more Touchdowns from junior tailback Jayce Hopewell, who has now put 11 scores on the board in the past three weeks.
This game has a lot of interesting takeaways: First it was the first 1-8 upset of the new regional seeding era, and shows part of why schools like Grandville that play tough schedules and have had to play the same matchups year after year in the playoffs are excited to see some potential new matchups in the early rounds of the playoffs.
But this game also in part shows the strength of the OK-Red (the conference that has now had a team end the season of the Highlanders for each of the last three seasons in the playoffs)… We will talk a bit more about the rest of the OK-red’s weekend in a bit though…
Lastly, as someone who has seen and called more Eric Stiegel-coached games than anyone in the past ten years, this game proves to me how good he and his staff are for Grandville. They have turned the tables on the season and against a bigger and unbeaten team running their same offense, they made all of the right plays from the jump and had an incredibly well schemed up win from the jump – DO not be suprised if they have another upset win this weekend against Portage Central as well.
THIRD DOWN: OK-Red Mixed Bag
The OK-Red is unquestionably in the shortest of lists for being the top conference in the state of Michigan every year, and week one proved to be a bit of a mixed bag of results for the league, as rather than the traditional inner-conference round one games we we, all of the schools from the Red were playing other conference teams in round one.
On one hand, Grandville’s upset win over KLAA champ Howell and a dominant win over a very goof Brighton team from OK-Red Champ East Kentwood fit the bill of how deep and strong we have seen the league been this year and every year. Plus in division two, Caledonia took care of business 41-13 over East Lansing.
But tough Hudsonville (to Portage Central) and Rockford (to Grand Ledge) losses balanced out those two big wins. So the second round will be very interesting to see if EK and Grandville will be on a collision course in the regional round, or if we will have the very odd situation without a single Red Rematch in the postseason.
Oh and by the way, Caledonia vs Mona Shores for a District crown in D2 could prove to be one of the best games of the entire season!
FOURTH DOWN: Crowded Division Four
D4 in west Michigan provides a ton of state title contenders and three GR-area schools are still alive and came away with good round one wins to prove their championship worthiness.
Kenowa Hills, the top overall seed in the division, had a to beat a battle-tested and tough GR Christian team in the first round. Unity Christian had the same task against Spring Lake. And South Christian picked up a dominant win over Marshall to start their playoff run.
The Kenowa round two game against Ludington and the South game coming up against Stevensville Lakeshore will both be live matchups on MSR – and could be the next step in those team teams being on a state semis collision course.
