(Audubon) On KSOM Friday night Audubon will try and make it back-to-back UNI-Dome appearances when they travel to St. Mary’s, Remsen.
It’s #3 at #2 in the AP Rankings and it’s rematch of last year’s semifinal when Audubon won 39-28. “They returned a lot, especially skill guys. Overall it’s nice to understand we’ve played these kids. Sometimes you get on film and you’re not sure how to evaluate them. We’ve seen these guys enough. We respect the heck out of ’em. It’s going to be a doozy Friday night.”
Audubon coach Sean Birks points out the Hawks offense can hurt you in a variety of ways. “They use motion and they are a dual threat. They do it really well. Their jet sweep with pulling guards is a staple. They’ll run their quarterback. They’ll throw some play action and I think the thing that makes them scary is they have two 6’3″ receivers that can scream down the sidelines.”
On paper Audubon’s two toughest regular season games were unable to be played due to COVID. Thus their 28-6 win against #9 Newell-Fonda Friday was big on multiple fronts. “Yeag I think it’s a confidence boots. Not that our kids were lacking confident, but it assures us that we are pretty darn good and we can beat really good teams. We can run the ball against a team that’s pretty physical and we can stop the run and stop the pass against a team that wants to do both of those things.”
Audubon get a big game from quarterback Gavin Smith in the Newell-Fonda win. He carried 37 times for 255 yards and three touchdowns. “It’s just the X’s and O’s is a big part of a it. When now you diagram plays and you have a quarterback handing to a running back there’s a guy you can’t account for. Now you are dedicating all seven guys to blocking you have one less guy that you have to worry about. He runs the ball really well and the last factor is he can throw the ball. So if teams start sucking up on it the play action game can be very effective.”
For as strong as Audubon has been offensively, the defense is the real story. They allow 4.4 points per game. “We’ve tackled well, we’ve limited big plays by opponents and we’ve dared them to drive the ball down the field. Eventually something breaks down and/or one of our guys makes a play.”
These are two of the premier programs in 8-Player and it’ll be the 5th head-to-head meeting in recent years. Each team has won twice. “We met in the playoffs for a dome berth in 2017. We met in the dome in 2019, now we are meeting to get there in 2020. It’s just a matter of two of the better teams in Western Iowa and some of the times you’re going to have to go through each other. We are proud to be in this position.”
St. Mary’s, Remsen is 9-0 on the season. The Wheelers are 8-0. Pregame coverage starts with our In the Huddle show at 5:15 p.m. The game kicks off at 7:00 on 96.5 FM KSOM.
