MHS looks to rebound against defending 2-AA champs

By STEVE CANNULI

Published: August 28, 2008

It is out of the frying pan and into the oven for the Morehead Panthers, who following last week’s 48-0 season-opening loss to Ragsdale, look for win No. 1 against the defending 2-AA state champion Reidsville Rams.
Reidsville and Morehead will meet Friday night at Community Stadium for the 40th time and despite last week’s outcome Rams’ head coach Jimmy Teague has warned his team to be ready.
“You point out the fact that they had two big turnovers that turned the game last week, but kids are kids,” said Reidsville head coach Jimmy Teague. “Morehead is going to be a whole lot better this week than last week.”
For first-year Panther coach Jason Smart, Friday’s game is as much about getting better as it is about facing the champs.
“It’s Morehead and Reidsville and our kids understand it,” he said. “We have got to pay atten-tion to a lot of the little things. Reidsville has a very good team, but we need to concentrate more on what we need to do, offensively and defensively.”
In the Panthers’ loss last week at Jamestown, an early series of events led to the game spiral-ing out of control and a 35-0 Ragsdale lead at the half.
Morehead punted on its first possession and the Tigers then put together a lengthy scoring drive. On their second drive, the Panthers seemed to have their legs underneath them, however after a couple of third-down conversions, an interception turned into seven points for the home team — and from there it got worse.
On the ensuing kickoff, the Tigers took the return the distance and had scored 14 points in a matter of seconds.
A scene vaguely familiar to Morehead fans in last year’s 55-0 loss to Reidsville. The Rams, who out gained the Panthers 512-minus-24, led 34-0 at halftime. In the loss, Morehead fumbled four times and surrendered 264 yards passing to the Rams on just 12 completions (22 yards per com-pletion).
“Their offense is very effective and their kids have been in big games,” said Smart. “We have to get better defensively on first downs. We can’t allow a team to be looking at second and short all night. They also have a knack for scoring points in bunches.”
In the loss last week, the Panther offense was held to six first downs, 92 yards rushing and had four turnovers (2 INTs, 2 fumbles).
Reidsville did not entirely take last week off. The Rams looked sharp against defending Vir-ginia state champion Gretna.
Neither coach puts a lot of credence into having a week off versus playing the opening week.
“With the scrimmage last week, we tried to treat it as much like a game week as possible,” said Teague. “We got some work in against a quality team like Gretna. What you worry about is when your opponent is coming off a bad game like they did, you know they’re going to be better.”
Smart, who is still in search of different combinations of players and positions, will go with sophomore Matt Swartzlander (6-5, 215) at center, a pair of juniors — Josh Hart (5-10, 305) and Marcus Williams (5-11, 215) on the right side of the line and two seniors on the left side — Jamele Henderson (6-0, 195) and Doug Anderson (5-10, 175).
Pulling the trigger on offense is senior Joe Glasgow (6-0, 180) at QB. Glasgow, who also split time with Jawaan Winfield (6-0, 170), was 4 of 8 passing last week, while Winfield was 2 of 8 passing.
“We have to be able to run the football,” said Smart. “We’re going to try and huddle more and try to keep our defense off the field.”
Seniors Dante Perkins (6 carries, 37 yards) and Glenn Wade (9-26) were the team’s two leading ball carriers last week. Wade (5-10, 235) was held in check by the Rams last year, as he gained just 16 yards.
However, MHS was minus-29 yards rushing as a team.
Defensively, the Panthers have to keep senior quarterback Ray Ray Butchee in their sights. Butchee, who amassed 40 touchdowns a year ago, torched the Panthers last season for 3 TDs.
Although he has a new supporting cast around him, Butchee is still the key figure to stop in the RHS offense.
“If you have one guy back on your offense, you want it to be your quarterback,” said Teague. “Ray’s been through the wars and you hope his leadership carries over to the rest of the guys.”
Offensively, replacing Tayon Graves and his production seem to be priority one for the Rams. Teague is quick to point out a Graves stat that seems to get lost in the scoring column.
“One thing is that Tayon rarely if ever fumbled and we definitely want to harp on that to our running backs,” he said.
Filling Graves’ shoes will be newcomer Aaron Easton (Sr., 5-9, 171) and H-back Omar Dickerson (5-11, 163).
Up front, three of Reidsville’s key components remain — in Jazz Totten (6-1, 237), Devin Ses-soms (6-2, 289) and Lance Spivey (6-1, 295).
The Rams’ offense will get a look Friday night at a familiar front — Morehead’s new 3-3 scheme — something that Teague and the Rams used for years.
“We definitely know what we have do to against the 3-3,” he said. “But it’s something we ha-ven’t seen much of so far in the preseason.”
On defense, the Rams have a few tough shoes to fill there as well but early on Teague has been pleasantly surprised in this unit’s play.
“A.J. Williams has been a real surprise,” said Teague. “We also have the big hole to fill in the middle with Connally gone, but Mike Stacey has really stepped up.”
Williams will start at safety along side Kenzel Doe, who will also start at flanker on offense. Stacey is one of three LBs — to go along with E.J. Foster and Dickerson.
“If you can keep this unit on the field and limit them by two or three possessions per half, you can have a chance,” said Smart. “Reidsville always has speed on defense and they fly around to the ball very well.”
Reidsville’s defensive front, which can shut down a team’s running game in the blink of an eye, features Sessoms at defensive tackle, Totten and Kenneth Covington (6-0, 200) at defensive ends and Damien Lee (6-2, 215) at nose guard.
Last week Smart admitted he had maybe too many people playing both sides of the ball — something they are working on this week. As many as seven or eight offensive starters flipped around and played defense last week, but that could all change in two days. Glasgow, Perkins, Anderson, Wade, Tyson Scales (slot back/linebacker), T.K. Kimber (wide receiver/LB) and Kyre’ Keen (WR/defensive back) all saw a high number of snaps against Ragsdale last week.
“We had too many kids going both ways last week,” he said. “This week we’ve tried to give the kids a chance to focus on just one side of the ball and give them some much-needed rest also.”
So when Friday night rolls around will it really matter if one team has a game in pocket or will the advantage fall to the other, who had an extra week to gameplan and rest.
“It can work both ways,” said Smart. “For us, it’s better that we got that first game out of the way because of our new schemes and such.”
“Our kids are anxious to get these games started,” said Teague. “We realize it would make a lot of team’s seasons to beat us.”
Friday’s game kicks off at 7:30 p.m.