The regular season ended last week with a disappointing loss for Little Cypress-Mauriceville. The Bears led most of the game before Lumberton tied the game in the last minute of regulation and the Raiders won 20-14 in overtime.
Coach Randy Crouch analyzed the loss which dropped the Bears into third place in the district. Any time you lose is difficult the coach confessed. He thought LC-M played well for over three quarters of the game, in fact the Bears may have played some of their best football of the season during that portion of the game.
The hope is the Bears will learn from their mistakes made on offense and defense in the latter stages of that game. Crouch advised, “We’ve got to press forward and get ready for Stafford.”
Houston Stafford is the bi-district opponent in the playoffs for the Bears. Crouch described the offense for the Spartans. They use two-backs from the Shotgun and one-back out of the Spread. Stafford is balanced running the football slightly more than throwing it.
The Spartans’ quarterback is senior Cameron Peters. He has done a good job leading the Stafford offense. Peters has passed for close to 800 yards while running for almost two hundred yards. He has accounted for nine touchdowns combined through the air and on the ground.
The two primary running backs are Churchill Williams and Jadon Winston. Both are juniors and have combined for over three hundred yards and four touchdowns rushing.
Peters spreads his passing targets around. Stafford has three outstanding receivers Ty’Dedrick Anderson, Jaydon Johnson, and Will Perro who will see the ball thrown in their direction. “They have a really good football team when you watch them on film and we’ll have a big challenge for us this week to prepare for them,” Crouch stated.
Little Cypress-Mauriceville will hope to move the ball against a good Spartan defense which had two shutouts during the season. Coach Crouch looked at the Stafford defense which bases out of a four-man front. The Spartans stunt very little and stay in their base 40 Defense most of the time.
The Spartans have an excellent player in defensive end senior Robert Wooten. He stands 6 feet 4 and weighs 225 pounds making him an obstacle to move for opposing blockers.
The other members of the defensive line are quality players also. Just a sophomore Isaiah Bogerty leads the team in sacks with six. Linebacker Kenny Steward is a leading tackler for the Spartans.
The Stafford secondary plays mostly man-to-man coverage. If they have a weakness it maybe in making interceptions. The Spartans only have two picks, but have recovered nine opponent fumbles.
The Spartan defense will force the Bears to execute their offense and stay on their assignments. Crouch said, “They don’t give up many cheap scores so we’ll have to work for what we get.”
It has been over a decade since the Bears won a post-season game. Little Cypress-Mauriceville has shown improvement even in the last couple of weeks according to Crouch despite the two losses. The Bears need to be more consistently productive later in this contest than they were in the last two games and put it altogether for a full contest.
Crouch provided the keys for Little Cypress-Mauriceville to beat Stafford. Just like all the other games during the season the Bears must get their alignments right, their assignments on offense and defense have to be correct, and then they have to use the correct techniques to execute what they are doing.
Coach Crouch believes the Bears are there mentally and physically capable of doing that in the playoffs. He is proud of how they have competed every week. “We have some things to clean up to get ready for Stafford, but I think we can with our preparation this week to go into the playoffs and do the very best we possibly can,” Crouch concluded.
The Little Cypress-Mauriceville Bears and the Houston Stafford Spartans play Friday night at 7:00 in Channelview. The game will be broadcast live on KOGT.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
-photo by Jerrod Brown, KOGT-
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