Sidelined with an ankle injury, Steele running back Malcolm Brown could only watch as Lake Travis beat the Knights 38-21 last year in the second round of the Class 4A Division II playoffs.
“I had faith in our team but I was a little frustrated,” Brown said after a practice this week. “I really wanted to play against Lake Travis. It was tough.”
Brown, one of the best junior running backs anywhere, will get his chance when Steele meets Lake Travis in a 4A Division I second-round game at noon Saturday at the Alamodome.
If you haven’t seen Brown play this season and enjoy watching good high school playoff football, I recommend you go downtown Saturday and catch this highly anticipated rematch. Given the talent on the field, it should be a great game.
Even without all-everything quarterback Garrett Gilbert, now a freshman at Texas, Lake Travis has gone 11-0 this season and extended its winning streak to 41 games.
The Cavaliers have won two consecutive 4A state titles and have looked unbeatable this season, scoring at least 52 points in nine of their 11 games.
At 9-2, Steele heads into Saturday’s clash with one less victory than it had last year at this point.
“We’re looking at this challenge as a tremendous opportunity for our program,” Steele head coach Mike Jinks said. “We have the utmost respect for Lake Travis. They haven’t won 41 games in a row and two state championships for nothing.
“But we feel we have a good team, too. These are the types of games you want to be involved in. Our goal is to get to the level where Lake Travis is now, and to do that, you have to prove you can play with those kinds of teams.”
Led by quarterback Michael Brewer, the son of former UT quarterback Robert Brewer, Lake Travis already has scored a whopping 574 points while holding opponents to 145.
"They don't make a lot of mistakes," Steele defensive coordinator Mark Pavlovsky said. "They're very sound. They take advantage of misalignments and really hurt you if you stay in the same defense for more than three plays. We're going to have to go multiple."
Steele is no slouch itself. The Knights have outscored the opposition 413-171, putting up more than 40 points four times and more than 60 once.
While the Cavaliers are favored, don’t count out Steele. Remember, the Knights will have No. 28 this time and that could be the difference. Steele’s best chance is to grind it out offensively and keep Brewer on the sideline as long as possible. That’s where Brown comes in.
A rugged runner with great vision and balance, Brown has rushed for 1,897 yards on 165 carries and scored 32 touchdowns this season. His average of 11.5 yards per carry speaks volumes about his ability to churn out yardage every time he gets his hands on the ball.
Brown, 6 feet and 213 pounds, is one of the most complete running backs I’ve seen in 31 seasons of covering high school football in the San Antonio area. And to think he’s only a junior!
“He is our Tim Duncan,” Jinks said. “Malcolm does for me and the Steele Knights what Duncan does for Gregg Popovich and the Spurs. He’s consistent and is just a great person. He always works hard in practice and leads by example.”
Brown has the size, strength, speed, quickness and all the intangibles that make a running back great.
Highly recruited since last year, Brown takes all the attention in stride. One of Brown’s most endearing qualities as a person, his coaches and teammates say, is his humility.
“I just try to progress every day, and the way to do that is come out here and work hard,” Brown said. “The Lord has blessed me with talent and I’m thankful. I just want to help my team.”
Brown’s most productive game this season came in a 38-34 loss to Kerrville Tivy on Oct. 23, when he rambled for 329 yards on 34 carries and scored four TDs. He ran for 271 yards in the regular-season finale against Alamo Heights, and 215 against Stevens in the Knights’ second game.
He had a season-low 100 yards in a 28-7 victory over Clemens, but carried only three times and scored twice.
“The offensive line has done a great job for me this season,” Brown said. “We’re going into this game against Lake Travis with a lot of focus.”
Steele’s only other loss came against Southwest, 14-13, in the third game of the season.
The Knights have enjoyed a meteoric rise under Jinks, who was head coach at Burbank for one season before moving to Steele when it opened in 2005. The Knights are 30-6 since going 3-7 in their first varsity season in 2006.
Steele finished 11-2 in 2007 and 10-2 last year.
No one familiar with Jinks’ background should be surprised that he has built a winner so quickly. He was a varsity quarterback at Judson for three seasons in the late 1980s, alternating with Tommy Ramey as a sophomore and junior before becoming a full-time starter his senior year.
Jinks played on Judson teams that went 37-4-1 under coach D.W. Rutledge, helping the Rockets reach the state final his junior year in 1988 and state semifinals in 1989. He went to a solid career at Angelo State, where he earned All-Lone Star Conference honors.
While Jinks is his own man, he leaves no doubt about the role his experience at Judson has played in his coaching career.
“I have a blueprint for success,” said Jinks, 37. “I played for some great coaches at Judson. The Steele community reminds me a lot of Judson. We have hard-working kids from great families. I just feel blessed to be here.”
While Brown gets most of the media attention, junior defensive tackle Marquis Anderson is being recruited heavily. Anderson played against Lake Travis last year, but was just coming back from an injury.
Three other players, wide receiver Sheldon McClain (Oklahoma), D.J. Jones (Houston) and offensive tackle Drew Phillips (UTSA) have committed to colleges already. McClain, who suffered a knee injury in the second game of the season, will graduate early and enroll at OU in January.
The Knights lost two other wide receivers, Blake Gardner and Darion Ray, to injuries this season.
“We’ve had some other kids who have stepped up and done a good job,” Jinks said. “I don’t want to take away from what our coaching staff has done because you have to put a program in place, but kids, numbers and talent win games.”
They said the same about Judson when Jinks played for the Rockets.
