For the fourth time in the last two seasons Crawfordsville and Western Boone will square off as the two Sagamore Conference rivals meet in the Class 3A Sectional 29 opener on Friday night at Crawfordsville. The two teams met up in the first SAC game of the season back in week three with the Stars coming away with a 49-0 win. The Athenians have played the Stars well in spurts over the last two seasons but haven’t been able to put a complete four quarters together against the co-SAC champions in the Stars.
“As I said before when we played them earlier, anytime you get the chance to play Western Boone, who is one of the premier programs in the state, is always an exciting yet challenging opportunity,” Crawfordsville coach Brad Clark said. “There’s been tiny periods and quarters where we’ve played them well, but it comes down to executing for an entire four quarters and that’s really been the message to our team all season.”
The Stars and their run-first offense trot out the SAC’s leading rusher in Trevor Weakley who has tallied 1,222 yards on the ground and 13 touchdowns while averaging 135.8 yards per game. Fellow senior Rowen Durbin has completed 62% of his throws and has 13 touchdowns to just three interceptions for the Stars.
On defense Cannon Brunes is one of the best linebackers in the state tallying 100 total tackles with eight sacks and 19.5 tackles for loss.
Despite the challenge that once again lies in front of them, Clark says his group will be ready to leave everything out on the field with their season being on the line.
“In this kind of sectional environment where the loser sees their season come to an end, you want to feel like you gave everything you had,” he said. “Regardless of who we drew that’s the mindset that we have to have. I know that our guys are willing to do that.”
A week ago Crawfordsville in their win against Frankfort, Crawfordsville was able to establish a ground game as Zeke Cardenas had 125 yards on 25 carries. In order to keep the high powered Stars (nearly 40 ppg) CHS will need to have a similar showing in the run game.
“I think we’ve seen our run game do well in spurts against Lebanon and Tri-West and then it we finally saw it come together against Frankfort,” Clark said. “It was one of those things where we executed how we wanted. Doing that against Western Boone will be a much tougher test, but if we are able to do that and help our defense it can make the game more interesting.”
Dealing with adversity is nothing new for Crawfordsville and if the challenge of taking on the Stars isn’t enough, CHS will have to do it with their backup quarterback in junior Kaden Patton. Senior signal caller AJ Hall suffered an ankle injury last week which forced Patton into the game. Fortunately for the Athenians Patton started most of the games a season ago and Clark knows he’ll be ready to lead the offense again on Friday.
“First off AJ as done a great job for us with stepping in and starting and being a leader,” Clark said of the injured Hall. “The good thing about this season is we felt all along like we had two starting quarterbacks and Kaden is a kid is we have a ton of confidence in. He also has that same confidence in himself. We know he’s going to go out and perform well.”
The win or go home game between the Athenians and Stars will kick it off at 7 pm. You can follow @Will_Willems on twitter as he’ll be providing live updates throughout the game.
