Shut down tailback Chucky Hunter, figured Aaron Barnett, and Free State High’s football team would struggle.

Basically, that’s what Barnett’s Shawnee Mission Northwest football team did.

“But not paying attention to Camren (Torneden),” Barnett said, “almost cost us the game.”

Shawnee Mission Northwest won, 34-27, in the third week of the season despite Torneden’s 379 yards of total offense – 200 passing and 179 rushing.

Needless to say, Barnett and the Cougars won’t be concentrating solely on Hunter during tonight’s rematch in the first round of the Class 6A playoffs.

Kickoff will be at 7 p.m. at Haskell Stadium. Sunflower Broadband 6 will have a delayed telecast at 10:30 p.m.

Although Hunter scored three touchdowns on short runs in that late September meeting at SM North District Stadium, the Firebirds’ senior running back gained only 61 yards, his lowest single-game output of the season.

“At that time, Camren had started only one game,” Barnett said. “We thought he looked good on film, but we knew Chucky Hunter was very good.”

Hunter, in fact, was named a first-team All-Sunflower League running back after running for 1,090 yards during his junior year. Now, despite his season-low output against SM Northwest and missing the Leavenworth game due to an ankle injury, Hunter already has surpassed his 2007 output.

Torneden and Hunter rank second and fifth, respectively, in Sunflower League total offense. Torneden has run for 846 yards and passed for 807, while Hunter has run for 1,130 yards and has 144 receiving yards.

Free State (6-3) will have both Torneden and Hunter healthy for tonight’s rematch with the Cougars, but SM Northwest (7-2) will be without tailback Bryce Atagi, who was a major factor in the first meeting, rushing for 143 yards and turning a flat pass into a 63-yard touchdown run.

Barnett kicked Atagi off the team prior to last week’s regular-season finale against SM North for an unspecified violation of team rules. At the time, Atagi had rushed for 1,167 yards and scored 14 touchdowns.

Free State senior lineman Grahm Saunders thinks Atagi’s absence will have little effect, if any, on tonight’s outcome.

“They still have some pretty good playmakers,” Saunders said. “They’ll probably play even harder without him.”

The Free State-SM Northwest winner will advance to a 6A quarterfinal next Friday against the winner of tonight’s Olathe East-Olathe North game.