SPENCERVILLE-It will be week 9 of the regular season on Friday night when the Spencerville play their last regular season home game when they take on the Crestview Knights.
It will be the final regular season home game for seven Bearcat seniors on Friday night. It’s a group that Spencerville head coach Kyle Koenig has enjoyed being around.
“This senior group will always be special to me,” said Koenig. “They were Freshman my first year at Spencerville. They were one of the first classes I had teaching, so being able to see them grow up and mature over the past few years has really been fun to see. They have worked hard and kept a positive attitude through the ups and downs of the last few years, and I am just really proud to have been able to be their coach.”
On the other side of the coin on Friday is the Knights. Crestview has been put through murders row the last couple of weeks with losing to Bluffton 42-0 before falling 49-7 last week to Columbus Grove. However Crestview head coach Cole Harting has seen some positives from his group the last two weeks.
“Our guys have played hard and competed,” said Harting. “I thought we executed our game plans well at times and were in positions to make plays. Now we just need to finish those plays, it showed us that we need to be better fundamentally, especially when it comes to blocking and tackling.”
Spencerville kept themselves in the game in the first half last week against LCC as they only found themselves down 15-7 at halftime before the T-Birds scored the last 21 points in the game to win 36-7.
“Last week was tough for us,” said Koenig. “LCC did a really good job of misdirection on their run game, and we were not very disciplined on the defensive side of the ball. We need to do a better job of reading our keys this week and making plays when we are in the right spots. On the offensive side of the ball they were more physical, and we struggled to get our run game going at all. I do think we improved on some aspects of things. We had to throw it more throughout the game and we found some success there and we had put an emphasis on taking away LCC’s deep passing game which I think we did.”
The Bearcats found some success late in the first half through the air. Even though it’s not what they normally, Koenig says it’s nice to see some success out of it.
“Obviously, we are a run first type of offense and last week we saw LCC fill the box more and we were able to get some big plays in the passing game,” said Koenig. “I think that is going to be something we have to sprinkle in more. If we want to take some pressure off of our running backs and offensive line we need to be able to throw the ball a bit.”
Despite the tough loss last week at home, Spencerville still finds themselves very much in the playoff race and are not too far off a home playoff game. The Bearcats are ninth in the D6 region 22 rankings and if the season ended today, the ‘Cats would visit Attica Seneca East.
“We have talked to our team about how we are trying to get some momentum going leading into the postseason,” said Koenig. “We are still fighting for position in the playoffs and fighting for a winning regular season. We need to make improvements this week, keep competing and coming together as a team and hopefully we will see the benefits on the field.”
Harting knows the Bearcats will be a tough task come Friday.
“Of all the teams that we have faced this season, they are the team that has shown the most improvement from week to week,” Harting said. “Offensively they do a nice job of running the ball and controlling clock. This allows them to limit possessions in games which puts a lot of pressure on the opposing teams. They also do a great job of setting up play action passes that complement their running game. Defensively, their line and linebackers do a great job of getting off blocks and stopping the run. We will need to do a great job of maintaining our blocking to create holes for our running backs.”
Harting offense will provide something that the Bearcats haven’t seen this season. It will be a spread offense but the Knights will look to run the ball as well as Braxton Leeth returns at running back and new Quarterback Aiden Huxley has some targets to throw to in receivers Aiden Perrot, Cash Hammons, Liam Putnam, and Wren Sheets.
“Crestview does a lot of things well,” said Koenig of the Knights. “They utilize the athletes that they have on the outside well. They are going to get on the outside with their screen game and then when you get sucked into it they will take shots behind you. They also have a really good running back who runs hard and took it to us last year. They also go up tempo, which we have not seen a ton of this year, so we will have to be ready for that. We just have to get the call, read our keys and play and that has been the mindset for us all week.”
For Spencerville it will appear that the running back room will consist of Zach Looser, Grady Smith, and Will Sensabaugh for the remainder of the season as Kolton Grigsby continues to battle injury. All three will need to have a big game if the Bearcats want to win on Friday night.
The Bearcats know a win on Friday and a little bit of help from teams in the region would more than likely get Spencerville a home playoff game for week 11. The factor helping the Bearcats are the second level points which is teams that Spencerville beat so if Allen East, Ridgemont, Riverside, and Wayne Trace win that will boost Spencerville chances of a home playoff game.
Koenig explained the keys to victory on Friday.
“The keys for us is that we need to establish our run game,” concluded Koenig. “If we are able to establish our run and sustain drives and control the clock that will be big for us. We have to win first down on both sides of the ball. We need to get ourselves into second and manageable and third and manageable so we can open things up and get their defense thinking a bit. On defense if we can win first down and get into some more predictable situations that will help our defense and what we send in to the guys to put them in the best spots we can to make plays and get stops. Lastly, we need to be more physical. Crestview always has some big guys up front, and we need to match the physicality that they will bring.”
If you can’t make it to the game tune in to Zsports3 as Brock Blythe will have all the action with the pregame show set for 6:30 followed by kickoff at 7pm.
B-rockblythe.org 