The real season begins

Published 11:34 pm Thursday, September 17, 2009

Although tonight’s football game between Murray County and Dalton is the 51st meeting between the two schools, it’s also a new beginning.

For the Indians (1-2) and Catamounts (2-1), it’s the start of Region 7-4A “A” division play.

Cats coach Adam Winegarden said his team is looking to the 7:30 p.m. game at Harmon Field as the start of a new season.

“We really are,” he said. “Of course, our first three games counted and we competed to win. But it really starts this week and you have to win region games to get to the playoffs and that’s where we want to be.”

Dalton strong safety Toombs Norman not only wants the win, he’s hoping the Cats defense shuts down an Indians offense that has been struggling this season.

“We’re going for the shutout,” Norman said. “We don’t want them to score at all. We’re going to treat them like any team we would play and go at them as hard as we can. This is our first region game, so this is a huge one.”

If the Cats are successful at smothering the Indians — Murray County has been outscored 48-0 in its last two contests and has failed to score in the last nine quarters — it will mark the 19th time Dalton has posted a shutout in the series, the last a 35-0 whitewash in 1990.

Dalton’s last shutout against any opponent came in 2007 at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe, where the Cats beat the Warriors 42-0. The Cats dropped their opener to Calhoun, 31-28, but have responded with back-to-back wins against defending champion Sprayberry and South Paulding in region crossover games.

Dalton scored 21 unanswered points in the second half of last week’s 35-14 win at South Paulding and held off a late rally by Sprayberry in a 27-21 win two weeks ago.

For Murray County’s offense to have a chance, Indians coach John Zeigler said his defense will have to step up, which means accounting for all of the Cats’ offensive weapons.

“Everybody is going to have to play their responsibility on defense,” Zeigler said. “They have so many options on offense with their quarterback, tailback, fullback and (Tevin Collins) at flanker can run. And they’re getting better every week.

“We’ve just got to run our people to the football.”

Woodland at Northwest

While Woodland-Bartow and Northwest Whitfield enter tonight’s sub-region opener at Bruin Stadium in Tunnel Hill with 1-2 records, both teams can’t help but believe they’re better than their early returns indicate.

Northwest opened with a 32-20 win against Southeast, but the Bruins have dropped back-to-back Region 7-4A crossover games against Hiram, 19-8, and at Sprayberry, 28-7.

“Obviously what stuck out from last week was mistakes, especially offensively,” Northwest coach Mike Falleur said. “It’s not a lack of effort. Our kids want to do right. We’re just making a bunch of mistakes at the wrong time. As coaches, we’ve got to go back and nail down what we’re doing wrong and really spend time on getting good the things we need to do to be successful.”

The Bruins have turned the ball over eight times the past two weeks while scoring just one offensive touchdown. With the start of the sub-region schedule, Northwest quarterback Chad Keeter knows that has to improve quickly.

“I feel like so far on offense, we haven’t had the kind of intensity we really want,” Keeter said. “This summer, when we worked out I felt like we’d improved so much all around, but so far in our games I just feel like we didn’t come out with what we needed to do. So I feel like I need to improve on getting my job done.”

Woodland coach Steve Hamilton, whose Wildcats sandwiched a 39-28 victory against Paulding County in between close losses to Adairsville and Osborne, probably has a good idea of what the Bruins have been going through.

“We’re averaging over 30 points a game,” Hamilton said. “But in those two losses, we’ve turned the ball over nine times. When we won, we didn’t turn it over. So there’s no secret for us. Against Adairsville, we turned it over six times and still had 400 yards. It’s frustrating to know realistically we should be 3-0, but we’ve beat our self twice. That’s kind of the story of our year so far.”

Injuries have forced the Wildcats to adjust as well. The team’s starting quarterback, Tucker Weather, suffered a concussion in the season opener and his backup injured his knee in the second week, pressing senior defensive back Evan Hilton into duty for the team’s power-T offense that relies on now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t fakery to challenge defenses.

The Wildcats may use both Weather and Hilton tonight. Hamilton is less sure about whether fullback Cambrell Turner (5-9, 205) will be back after suffering a broken hand against Paulding County, but the certain about the sophomore’s potential for the long run.

“He’s special,” Hamilton said. “He’s going to be something.”

Heritage-Catoosa at Southeast

Southeast coach David Crane made one thing clear to his players early in the week: Heritage-Catoosa is a much-improved team.

A year ago, the Raiders mauled the first-year Generals, 55-17, and rolled up a whopping 682 yards of total offense. Quarterback Tanner McCutchen passed for 334 yards and receivers Jeremy Bishop and Damond O’Neal each had more than 100 yards in receptions. And running back Carmelo Apodaca rushed for 200 yards.

“It’s like I told the boys,” Crane said. “Heritage is better across the board at every position this year than last year. Secondly, they’re much more confident. They got their first win last week (23-0 over Gordon Lee) and they’re going to be very dangerous coming in here.”

Several players jumped out at Crane while watching video of Heritage: quarterback Jake Sampson, wide receiver/defensive back Matt Chattin, running back Ethan Thompson, two-way lineman Dylan Lowe (6-4, 240), linebacker Will Crane and cornerback Taylor Stitt.

“All those guys played a bunch last year and they got a great deal of experience,” Crane said. “They’ve worked hard in the weight room and look better physically than at this time last year. With a first-year program, you’re going to struggle. They took their lumps, but they’re very much improved this year.”

Generals coach Tim James, whose late father Raymond James was a long-time coach at East Ridge High in Tennessee, said he’s still working with a relative young squad, but one that’s shown improvement on a weekly basis.

“We still make sophomore mistakes and turnovers have plagued us until last Friday,” he said. “That was the first night we didn’t turn the ball over a whole lot and we were fortunate to get our first win.”

James said the Generals will run a spread offense similar to Southeast and has the ability to control the tempo and shift into a higher, more fast-paced style of attack with their “NASCAR package.”

“It’s a situational thing,” he said. “We’ll look at the defense and take what it gives us. We try to take advantage of that. We’ll look at how many (defenders) they have in the box and determine whether we want to throw or pass.”