Pella hosts Grinnell tonight in the class 3A football playoffs, with the winner advancing to the quarterfinals.

It’s a matchup of strength versus strength, with the Tigers ground game trying to wear down the Dutch rush defense.  Grinnell features Wyatt Hunter, the leading 11-player rusher in the state with 2,074 yards and a class 3A best 34 total touchdowns.  Meanwhile, Pella has allowed 908 rushing yards all season, just 113 per game.

Little Dutch coach Jay McKinstrey expects a physical, low-scoring game where there is little margin for error, and he says that his guys have to be mentally tough for the full 48 minutes.

“We have to actually want this more so that when things maybe don’t go as well as you’d want them too, like Grinnell has a big play, how do you respond?  That’s part of growing up, and that’s part of being seniors, and we have a lot of seniors.”

The Little Dutch have beaten Grinnell in the regular season each of the last four years, and have won five in a row in the series.  The last Tiger victory was in 2012.

Opening kick tonight is at 7:00 at Pella High School.  Trevor Castle and Randy Sikkema will call the game live on the KRLS2 stream at www.kniakrls.com.  Pregame hits the air at 6:30.