Tongue River And Big Horn Football Preparing For 2022 2A East Conference Play

This week is the start of conference play in 2A.

Tongue River got ready for it last week with a 49-to-6 win at Thermopolis.

Coach Steve Hanson says just about everything went right in that game.

“Our defense forced 2 turnovers, they forced a lot of 3rd and long situations that Thermopolis didn’t want to be in, and then offensively everything worked. When you really look at our play count, Connor Cummins went 7 for 10, but he had 2 touchdowns and 150 yards throwing. On the ground, we rushed the ball 22 times for 258 yards. Alex Barker had 16 carries for 148 yards, and I think off the top of my head, he averaged almost 10 yards a carry and he had a touchdown in that game. I think we had 6 different players reach the end zone. Everything worked. We were really clicking on all cylinders. Special teams looked like they should in a week 1 game. We never had to punt the ball. We were firing on all cylinders.”

Tonight the Eagles host Glenrock.

The Herders haven’t had a winning season since Coach Ray Kumpla retired in 2018, and are now led by Carl Federer who was an assistant under Kumpla.

Hanson says it looks like in order to get back to their winning ways, Glenrock is going back to the style of football that worked, and he knows what that’s all about.

“He knows how to run that offense and it’s very evident on film, that they’re back to the old Glenrock double-wing, where they’re going to bully you in the box. They’re going to push people around and they’re going to run the ball really hard, and they’re much more fundamental in what they’re doing this year, than have been in the past. I do think there are some things that we can exploit, but we can’t look past a conference opponent, somebody like Glenrock who’s hungry to get back to their tradition of winning and they play a physical brand of football.”

Kickoff this evening is at 6 o’clock.

Meanwhile, Big Horn is looking to put last week’s heart-breaking 14-to-7 loss against Lovell behind them.

Coach Kirk McLaughlin says despite the way the game ended, he’s pleased with how the Rams fought and that they gave themselves a chance to at least tie if not win that game.

Now the team just has to make sure they carry over that fighting spirit to the next game and finish the job.

“We got just to limit mistakes and keep fighting like we did. If we have that kind of fight in us, we’ll be in a lot of games, put ourselves in a position to win more and when we needed to put points on the board or move the ball, we did. “

Tonight Big Horn travels to Upton-Sundance, that game will be played at Sundance.

McLaughlin says it’s been tricky to prepare this week, because the Patriots have not yet played a game, so the Rams can only guess what their opponent will be like, based on past meetings.

“We’ve been looking at the roster, we kind of know who their studs are coming back, we just don’t know who those new role players will be, and they might have a new stud that we didn’t account for, so just understanding our stuff more has kind of been a focus too, and knowing what we do and knowing our rules and our assignments and then we’ll adjust as we need to during the game. They’re going to show us something different we’ve never seen before and we’ve got to be able to adjust, the sooner we can do that, the better off we’ll be. Pretty multiple wing T offense, lot of mis-direction, they’ve had a lot of great backs, last year they were able to swing it a little bit more. They got a good passer, so you just can’t key in on their running game. Defensively they’re just a 52-cover-zero, we’re going to run downhill at you and try to stop them. They’re an aggressive defense and they’ve been really good the last 2 years.”

Kickoff is scheduled for 7pm.