Big Horn Football Team Out To Show Lovell They’re Different From Beginning Of The Season

What was the first game of the season for the Big Horn Rams football team, will also be the last.

BH and Lovell will kickoff state championship weekend on Friday, November 11th at noon in Laramie.

The rematch will feature the top 2 offenses in Class 2A, in fact for the season, the Rams have done 1 yard better than Lovell.

The Rams and the Bulldogs met 2 months ago in week 1 of the season, and Lovell was able to get out of town with a 14-7 win, after Big Horn fumbled the potential game tying touchdown in the end zone with less than 30 seconds to go.

Rams quarterback Cooper Garber says he remembers what Lovell did last time, and expects the same from the Bulldogs, however his team has improved since then.

“They’re a big running team, they’ve got some big guys, they’re going to try and push us around and we know that they’re going to come out physical and they’re a physical team. They’re going to try and run the ball right down out throats. We’re more of a sound team. We’ve got our defense kind of narrowed down, where by the beginning of the year we’re still kind of learning it but now we’ve got it figured out and offensively I just feel we’re so much diverse in what we can do.”

Tight End Dawson Richards says BH has been learning since that week 1 loss.

“People have become a lot more confident in their positions on defense and on offense, so everyone’s kind of a little more settled into their spots, and they understand our defense a lot more and all together we’re just a lot better on defense.”

BH Coach Kirk McLaughlin says Lovell hasn’t changed much all season, mostly because they haven’t had to.

“They’ve been able to run the ball pretty consistent against all opponents and hit the occasional deep pass or pass to move the chains, but they’ve been able to do what they do because they’re disciplined and they’re physical and they do a good job of what they run, so I don’t really expect a whole lot of new stuff because if we can’t stop their base runs, why would they do anything different? Just looking back at that first game, defensively we don’t look like the same defense, we’ve kind of changed our philosophies a little bit with the ball on the offensive side. I think we’re just a more disciplined team and we’re able to execute at a higher level.”

This will be the 5th time in 7 years that Big Horn is in the state championship game, and the Rams are back after a 2-year hiatus.

Lovell has made it to the state championship game in each of the past 2 years, coming up short both times.

The 2020 championship game was not played in Laramie due to the COVID pandemic.

The Bulldogs last won a state championship back in 2011.