Hanging on a wall in the recently renovated Katy High fieldhouse are an assortment of tweets and articles from the last nine months.

Tweets that say the Tigers will “get killed” by North Shore in Thursday’s nationally-televised season-opening showdown. Articles claiming that North Shore owns Texas high school football; one even going as far as to ask whether the Tigers’ championship dynasty is over.

Every day, the Tigers’ players and coaches pass by that wall. And stew.

“That stuff drives us and motivates us,” junior quarterback Bronson McClelland said. “The reason we feel we’re on a different level mentally is because we know what we’ve done for the past nine months.”

Katy knows. The Tigers know they are 1-3 against the Mustangs in their last four meetings over the last three seasons. They had front-row seats to watching North Shore beat them twice—it’s almost unheard of to think of Katy losing to the same team twice in the same year—last season by a combined 25 points en route to the Mustangs’ undefeated state championship season.

They know much of that Mustangs team returns, including remarkable talents like senior running back Zach Evans (five-star recruit, 44 offers), junior quarterback Dematrius Davis (four-star recruit, 22 offers), senior running back John Gentry (three-star recruit, Arkansas commit), senior offensive lineman Damieon George (three-star recruit, Alabama commit), senior linebacker Corey Flagg (three-star recruit, Miami commit), junior receiver Shadrach Banks (four-star recruit, Texas A&M recruit; will not play this game because of a leg injury) and so on and so on.

And yet, it’s notoriety that fuels the underdog Tigers.

“There’s not a person around here looking at offers,” McClelland said. “It’s about, can you play? Look at (senior receiver) Jordan Patrick. His talent level is off the charts. But he only has two offers because of his height. People talk about this offer and that offer … if you have offers, great. But that doesn’t mean you have talent. I’ve seen kids 6-foot-8 with a lot of offers who can’t play football.

“The talent level on this team of kids who can go out there and ball … we see that. And because of that, we trust each and every guy on this football team.”

That bond, chemistry and faith in one another is what McClelland said separates this Tigers team from the last few years.

“We understand what we’re going up against,” junior defensive back Dalton Johnson said. “We’re confident. We’re playing together and we’re ready.”

The first step to conquering the mighty goliath that is North Shore is believing. Katy has that.

“I feel like we’re really confident,” senior linebacker Jaylen Phillips said. “There’s nobody in our locker room who doesn’t feel like we can’t beat North Shore. Obviously they’re a good team and we’re going to have to play a good ballgame, but we feel we can do that. We can win.”

The next step is shoring up weaknesses that caused the Tigers to fail last year against the Mustangs. That means better tackling, first and foremost.

Katy’s defense, particularly the secondary, played timidly at times last season. That was due to inexperience. A year later, that secondary is now the strength of the defense, and tackling is a reason why.

Coaches and players said to tackle well means to understand your job, keep your eyes moving, read your rules and trust the guy next to you. Inexperience produced hesitation for Katy last year, and that split-second of extraneous thought is all a team like North Shore needs to break a big gain.

“Tackling is what we worked on all summer, all offseason,” Johnson said. “Our technique and form is a lot better. We’re not just flying in there and diving in. It’s keeping your head up, driving your hips through. That’s really been our focus, because wrapping up, making the tackle and getting them on the ground will win us the game.”

Another weakness for the Tigers last year was physicality, or lack thereof.

The Mustangs have a huge, imposing offensive line, led by George. There may not be a better or bigger offensive line in the state. The Tigers’ defensive line has worked all offseason on technique, such as using their hands better to get around linemen and being faster off the ball.

“They’re some big dudes,” junior defensive lineman Cohen Dearman said. “We’re undersized, but we still have the speed and technique to beat them out. We can’t come in scared or worried about what happened last year. This is a whole new year, whole new game for us.”

That’s the mindset coach Gary Joseph desires. Last year, Joseph saw a team that was often intimidated by North Shore’s size, speed and athleticism.

“They haven’t played anybody like this, and that’s why I don’t want them going in there worried about how big or fast they are,” Joseph said. “You have to have confidence that you’re going to be able to execute. They’re going to hit us. They’re too good and they have too much talent. It’s about how we respond to getting hit.

“Are we going to fight back or are we going to allow them to keep pounding us? When we get hit, we have to hit back. We have to find ways to make ourselves successful. This isn’t about a moral victory. This is about going out there with the intention of winning the ballgame.”

McClelland has been confident all season, saying during media interviews how sure he is that Katy will win this week. He is respectful of North Shore. All of the Tigers are. But he has no doubt his team will go to the “eastside” and take care of business.

He has been laughed at for those comments. After all, they say, how can McClelland be so confident this year after losing twice to North Shore last year?

“I’ve been here for a while now, since 2016 as a ball boy on the sidelines,” McClelland said. “We won a state title in 2015, and 2016, 2017, 2018 didn’t. But why I’m so confident, and everyone on our team is, is because this is more of a bond and a brotherhood. We trust each other. The last three years, it wasn’t that we didn’t have the talent, but it was the bond and the brotherhood that I don’t think was always there. I trust the guy next to me, and he trusts me. That’s a really big thing for us.”