Big Horn and Tongue River Football Teams Playing Tune-Up Games Before Playoffs

Playoffs spots for Big Horn and Tongue River have been secured and locked in, which means their games this week mean nothing as far as the playoffs are concerned.

The 2 teams settled things last in the Thunder Bowl.

Both teams had their own problems in the first half.

The Rams were bitten by the turnover bug, while the Eagles were unable to finish a drive.

They got into the red zone 3 times, came up empty on all 3 and the last one was stopped at 1, just before halftime.

Rams Coach Kirk McLaughlin says he was pleased that his teams’ defense bended but didn’t break.

“That was an absolutely huge, because they were going to get the ball to start the second half. That could’ve been a big swing in their favor, so that was a big time stop by the defense, got away from the goal line enough to end the half and then start over in the second half.”

BH is guaranteed a home game next week in the first round of the playoffs and in the semi-finals, should they make it.

This week the Rams make the long trip to Burns, who is already in the playoffs, but the Broncs are trying to secure the #3 seed.

McLaughlin says it may seem tempting for Big Horn to take it easy in this game, but there’s a good reason why they shouldn’t do that.

“We’re going to go down there to win the game. We’re not just complacent right now because if we go down there and lay an egg, that performance is just going to lead into the first round of the playoffs and we don’t want that. We got great momentum right now, we want to keep it going.”

Kickoff at Burns is scheduled for 2pm.

The Rams might do a little scoreboard watching, because in the first round of the playoffs, they will host the winner of this afternoon’s game between Kemmerer and Mountain View.

Meanwhile, Tongue River has one game to fix up what went wrong last week, as the Eagles host Wheatland on Senior Night.

Although TR gave up 2 touchdowns against Big Horn, Coach Steve Hanson says he can’t blame the defense, because the 2 touchdown drives were set-up by turnovers on their side of the field,

“We got to a better job in our run game, doing some blocking things, but ultimately we learned that our defense is incredibly solid and we can create turnovers, we can make opportunities. We can’t make mistakes against a good football team, and Big Horn is a good football team, and we made too many mistakes.”

Tongue River will have the #2 seed out of the East for the 2A playoffs no matter what.

The Eagles have yet to beat Wheatland in 4 tries, and they have a chance to get that monkey off of their back, because the Bulldogs have been eliminated from playoff contention.

The fact that the game means nothing to both sides, means nothing to Hanson, who says TR will take a business as usual approach.

“We’re going to approach it just like it’s a conference game. We’re not taking an approach that we want to necessarily rest anybody or get other guys reps. We want momentum, we want to win, and we want to prove that we can improve off of a tough loss.”

Kickoff against Wheatland is scheduled for 6pm.

The Eagles will know who their first round opponent will be before the game starts, because Lyman and Cokeville play this afternoon.

The loser will make the trip to Dayton next week.