There’s a big Pine Tree Conference game in store for this weekend. And if history serves, it’s going to be close.
Cony and Lawrence meet for a chance to earn a significant conference win in what is shaping up to be another close race. Lately, the matchups have been dead even; Cony beat Lawrence 7-6 last year, and 28-27 in the playoffs the season before.
Both teams can make a major move in the conference Friday night. A Cony win would move the Rams to 3-1 and put them in the conference driver’s seat at the halfway point of the season. A Lawrence win pulls the Bulldogs even at 2-2, cancels out an ominous 0-2 start and puts them in position to battle for a home playoff game — if not a bye.
“Our league’s pretty equal. I think we’ve figured that out in three weeks,” Cony coach B.L. Lippert said. “There’s probably not a single favorite, there’s a handful of teams that can win it. We knew that back in August, and that’s been confirmed.”
Here’s a closer look at the matchup:
When: 7 tonight
Where: Keyes Field, Fairfield
Cony’s Lippert on Lawrence: “The 1-2 record’s probably a little misleading. They’re a very good football team. … They’re really well-coached. Defensively, John Hersom’s as good as there is, Kenny Lindlof calls a great game offensively as well. You just know they’re going to be prepared, and you want to match that schematically.”
Lawrence coach John Hersom on Cony: “On the offensive side, what they do, they do really well. We expect to see their quarterback heavily involved both as a runner and a thrower. They’ve got some weapons in their system that they run, we’re going to have to cover the whole field. … We’ve got to block well against their defense. They’re very aggressive.”
Three keys for Cony:
• Shake it off. Some defeats hurt more than others, and last week’s 14-13 loss to Skowhegan — in which the Rams turned the ball over three times, scored on only two of six red zone trips and trailed for only the final minute and 41 seconds — seemed to resonate as a particularly disappointing result. Cony will need to have that game completely out of its mind by the time it takes the field tonight.
“That’s something we’re going to have to find out,” Lippert said. “You don’t want to have that loss … affect us the next week, and the senior leadership we have on this team, we hope that we’ll be able to rebound quickly.”
• Win up front. Cony reached the red zone on its first five drives last week. It returned on only one of its next five. A big reason was that the Indians began to take over in the trenches, which shut down the run game, forced quarterback Riley Geyer out of the pocket and made the Rams one-dimensional.
“Skowhegan committed five or six guys to the pass, which should mean you can run the ball, and we struggled,” Lippert said. “We just didn’t physically move guys.”
• Take the fans out of it. Keyes Field is a particularly daunting environment for road teams, with fans sitting right on top of the action. Cony will need to start fast, because it’ll be at a venue where it’s tough to rally from an early deficit and against a Lawrence team with a head of steam.
Three keys for Lawrence:
• Weather the storm. In both of its two wins, Cony reached the red zone on its first four drives. The Rams like to start fast, and Hersom knows matching Cony’s pace — or slowing it — will be important.
“Sometimes it’s very difficult to mimic the opponent, so it does take some getting used to,” he said. “The speed of the game, the speed of the opponent, it comes into play as we start the game. We’ve got to be ready to match that.”
• Be balanced, and be versatile. Cony’s defense is legit, and likely too stingy to beat with a one-dimensional approach. In Isaiah Schooler, Kyle Carpenter and Alex Higgins, the Bulldogs have a good running attack, but they’ll need to branch out to have their best shot at moving the ball.
“They’re very tough to run against, so we’re going to need to have success in the pass game,” Hersom said. “We’ll definitely have to mix it up. I don’t think that we can rely on the run game like we did last week.”
• Start strong, end stronger. As is the case at the start of the game, Cony has shown an ability to come out fast after halftime. Lawrence likes to save its best punch for then as well, and having the best second-half answer will go a long way toward determining the winner Friday night.
“We’ve always felt that the third quarter is the quarter we want to control, we want to win,” Hersom said. “We have that in our mindset each and every week. We hope that the third quarter is always our quarter.”
Drew Bonifant — 621-5638
dbonifant@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @dbonifantMTM
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