Week 1 Preview: Indians, Broncos ready for 'rodeo' WATCH THE VIDEO
Lead Summary
By
Stephen Forsha-sforsha@gmail.com
HILLSBORO — Opening the season with a young and inexperienced squad, the Hillsboro Indians will host the Western Brown Broncos in Week 1 at Richards Memorial Field.
Besides starting the preseason without 29 different players from a season ago, Hillsboro will face the Broncos possibly without two of their four returning players from last season.
Senior running back Christian Wildey was listed as day-to-day earlier in the week, and junior Kyler White could miss a majority of the season as he injured his ring finger, which had to be surgically repaired and will need time to heal.
To put it simply … the Indians could open the season with a quarterback, running back and offensive line that have a combined zero games of varsity experience come Friday night.
"What hurts about both of those guys being injured are they both play offense and defense for us, along with special teams," HHS head coach Brian Spicer said. "We have to believe that when one guy goes down, another guy will have to step up. That must be our attitude this season."
The Indians will be facing a Western Brown team, who finished 6-4 last season, that is in love (or at least a strong like) with throwing the football. They use a spread offense similar to Kenton with empty sets as they will run the ball with their quarterback.
"They have some good players back, and they have a total commitment to throw the football," Spicer said. "To force them to run the football, we have to make sure our coverages are good because what we are going to see Friday is a change from the SCOL style we're used to seeing."
Again, this opening week game came back to experience as the Indians have very little and the Broncos have more.
"They do have more experience than us, and that is a tough fix," Spicer said.
Defensively, the Broncos use an odd stack look and will use a lot of different blitzes to pressure the young Indians, according to what Spicer said he has seen in the two Bronco scrimmages.
Even the Broncos like to make things interesting on special teams.
"They like to onside kick, block kicks and they don't like to punt on four downs," Spicer said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they would go for it on fourth-and-10.
"They like to score, and again, it's like the philosophy of Kenton and our kids will have to be on their toes. I wouldn't be surprised if they put the pressure on us. We started to prepare on Saturday for them."
With two scrimmages under their belt, Spicer said following last Friday he was very frustrated because of miscues and missed assignments, but again, he said he realized that was the first time his team had any game experience on a Friday night.
"A lot of the guys were lining up for the first time, and we looked poor on execution, which made me mad. But like I've said before, we are young, but we do need to improve each week.
"We need to move the football on offense, we can't have three-and-outs, and we need to get rid of at least half of our mistakes than what we did in the scrimmage. We are trying new things."
Spicer spoke about other improvements that need to be made.
"I thought we were tired, but we are working on our rotations, and we need to commit to those rotations to keep everyone fresh," he said. "Our biggest challenge is to make better tackles and slow down our opponents' offense while we are on defense.
"We need to make Western Brown beat us with the run and not let them do what they want to do."
To obtain victory, the Indians have to keep it simple.
"Our strategy is survival," he said. "We have to run and block well, which is no different for any team," he said. "The team is working to get better in practice, and every practice we have to learn and improve."
HHS and the Broncos will kick off at 7:30 p.m.[[In-content Ad]]
Besides starting the preseason without 29 different players from a season ago, Hillsboro will face the Broncos possibly without two of their four returning players from last season.
Senior running back Christian Wildey was listed as day-to-day earlier in the week, and junior Kyler White could miss a majority of the season as he injured his ring finger, which had to be surgically repaired and will need time to heal.
To put it simply … the Indians could open the season with a quarterback, running back and offensive line that have a combined zero games of varsity experience come Friday night.
"What hurts about both of those guys being injured are they both play offense and defense for us, along with special teams," HHS head coach Brian Spicer said. "We have to believe that when one guy goes down, another guy will have to step up. That must be our attitude this season."
The Indians will be facing a Western Brown team, who finished 6-4 last season, that is in love (or at least a strong like) with throwing the football. They use a spread offense similar to Kenton with empty sets as they will run the ball with their quarterback.
"They have some good players back, and they have a total commitment to throw the football," Spicer said. "To force them to run the football, we have to make sure our coverages are good because what we are going to see Friday is a change from the SCOL style we're used to seeing."
Again, this opening week game came back to experience as the Indians have very little and the Broncos have more.
"They do have more experience than us, and that is a tough fix," Spicer said.
Defensively, the Broncos use an odd stack look and will use a lot of different blitzes to pressure the young Indians, according to what Spicer said he has seen in the two Bronco scrimmages.
Even the Broncos like to make things interesting on special teams.
"They like to onside kick, block kicks and they don't like to punt on four downs," Spicer said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they would go for it on fourth-and-10.
"They like to score, and again, it's like the philosophy of Kenton and our kids will have to be on their toes. I wouldn't be surprised if they put the pressure on us. We started to prepare on Saturday for them."
With two scrimmages under their belt, Spicer said following last Friday he was very frustrated because of miscues and missed assignments, but again, he said he realized that was the first time his team had any game experience on a Friday night.
"A lot of the guys were lining up for the first time, and we looked poor on execution, which made me mad. But like I've said before, we are young, but we do need to improve each week.
"We need to move the football on offense, we can't have three-and-outs, and we need to get rid of at least half of our mistakes than what we did in the scrimmage. We are trying new things."
Spicer spoke about other improvements that need to be made.
"I thought we were tired, but we are working on our rotations, and we need to commit to those rotations to keep everyone fresh," he said. "Our biggest challenge is to make better tackles and slow down our opponents' offense while we are on defense.
"We need to make Western Brown beat us with the run and not let them do what they want to do."
To obtain victory, the Indians have to keep it simple.
"Our strategy is survival," he said. "We have to run and block well, which is no different for any team," he said. "The team is working to get better in practice, and every practice we have to learn and improve."
HHS and the Broncos will kick off at 7:30 p.m.[[In-content Ad]]