(Oakland) Riverside travels to Logan-Magnolia Friday night with a spot in the quarterfinals on the line. The Panthers are 7-1 and the Bulldogs are 8-1.
Riverside coach Darrell Frain refers to his team’s third round playoff opponent as one of the best teams remaining in the area. “They are probably considered the best team and we are probably one of the bottom ones left so I figured we’d get them. Big, physical team that comes right at you with smash mouth football. Hopefully we can withstand it and have a chance on Friday.”
The Bulldog defense will be tasked with corralling a rushing attack that’s closing in on 2,000 yards for the season. “Our front 5-6 guys have to play big. If we don’t we could be in bad shape Friday. We’ve counted on them all year long so hopefully they can step up and have a great game again.”
Gavin McGuire leads Lo-Ma’s rushing attack with 953 rushing yards. “They play fast. They get off the ball fast. They get on you and sustain their blocks. They have a good back in the backfield that reads those blocks. They do a great job of what they do. They buy into what they do and they play hard.”
Lo-Ma advanced to this game with a sound 27-6 with over IKM-Manning. Riverside was down last week on the road against Lawton-Bronson, but found a way to win their sixth straight game. They trailed 18-13 going into the 4th quarter and put together a memorable final drive for victory. “Our second half of every game has been our best half. We just get better and better and feel stronger and stronger as we go. Even when they scored with 1:36 left I felt like we had a chance and you looked at the kids in the huddle they felt the same way. We all thought we were going to win. We had one big pass play to Brogan Allensworth and things just took off from there. Austin Kremkoski had a couple of great scrambles and then the pass to Rhett Bentley for the win. We just keep playing hard and good things have happened for us.”
Brogan Allensworth became Riverside’s career leader in receiving yards with his 91 yards last week. He passed Tanner Storrow on the all-time list and now has over 1,300 career yards.
