Forget the tangibles.

Asked how his eighth-seeded Walton Braves did the unthinkable and upset Pensacola Catholic 28-24 on the road to open the Region 1-2A bracket, head coach Keith White kept the explanation simple.

"They don't have the heart we got," he said.

That's really the only way to describe this win. A win built on stacking the box with blockers for a heavy package. A win built on the weight room. A win built on the foundation of a frontrunner looking past a foe it handled 52-16 earlier in the year.

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"They're not as tough as us. They don't lift weights like we do," White said. "They're just frontrunners who thought we'd go away, who thought we'd give up. We did not."

Pensacola Catholic entered the night not only ranked No. 1 in all of 2A (seeded second in region), but just outside the top 10 in all of Florida — ranked higher than Niceville or Choctaw or Lincoln or Pace or any of the Panhandle teams still alive in larger classes. And for good reason. An 8-0 record in Florida featuring wins over Pace and Pine Forest and a District 1-2A championship will do that, only White saw holes in their crown as the lead 2A state frontrunner.

"Our game plan was to keep it close in the fourth quarter," White said. "We had a package we hadn't run all year with two tight ends and a full house in the backfield blocking for a defensive end in the wildcat. We were just going to run right at 'em. We had success with it in the first half and they didn't make any adjustments, so we just went back to that in the fourth quarter."

That defensive end was Cameron Blackburn, all 5-foot-9, 155 pounds taking the place of a sidelined 6-5, 225-pound all-state quarterback in Wells Bettenhausen. Blackburn rushed for two scores and Dylan Louthain rushed for another.

"I call Cameron 'rattlesnake' because he's been with me for four years and he's the toughest SOB you've ever seen," White said. "They couldn't stop us. It was because the offensive linemen that've been with me for four years. I told 'em before the game we'd run it behind them and we did. Those guys, Kelan Washington and Hoss Doss and Max Reyna, they never get the attention or spotlight. We put it on them and they came through."

Wells Bettenhausen added a touchdown toss to Dominic Goodwin for the seventh-seeded Braves, who will go back to the underdog role when they visit third-seeded Bolles next Friday. Bolles beat Taylor County 49-0 in their quarterfinal.

Regardless of whether the Cinderella run continues, the Braves proved a great deal Friday night.

"The heart in the DeFuniak kids is something else," White said. "They believed tonight and they're not done."

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Walton beats Catholic in Region 1-2A QF