Cats hope to keep the upper hand

Cats hope to keep the upper hand By PAUL ADKINS, Sports Editor You need no motivation to play the Logan-Man game. It takes care of itself. The two Logan County high school football teams have played a heated rivalry for decades. It’s also always been the traditional season opener for both teams. The rivalry renews on Friday night at Logan Stadium as the Class AA Wildcats square off with the Class A Billies. Game time is set for 7:30 p.m. “It’s a game that you remember the rest of your life. Win or lose,” Logan third-year head coach Gary Mullins said. “You’re either going to have a good feeling about it or a bad feeling about it. It’s a big game.” Logan has seemed to dominate the series in recent years. In fact, the Wildcats have beaten Man in six out of the last seven years. The only black mark was in 2004 when the Billies downed the Cats 22-18 at Logan in Coach Mullins’ debut. “We’ve been successful in the last little bit here but almost every game has been close,” Mullins said. “We don’t expect this one to be any different because we know that they are a quality football team and they are going to give us everything that we can handle. If we’re not ready to play we’ll lose. We hope to play our best game where we can be victorious on Friday night.” Logan and Man played a barn-burner of a game last season at Man as the Wildcats held on for a 12-10 win in the rain. The Billies looked to attempt a potential game-winning 30-yard field goal in the game’s final seconds but the snap and hold were muffed and kicker Linzy Collins never had a chance to get the kick off. Mullins said the Billies will be difficult to beat again. Both squads made the playoffs last season. Logan was 5-6 and fell in the opening round of the 2A playoffs at Weir. Man went 8-4 as the Billies beat Hamlin in the first round of the Class A playoffs, then lost to Williamstown in the second round. “We know that it’s going to be the toughest game that we play all year,” Mullins said of the Billies. “They are going to come at us harder than anyone will come at us this year. We have to be prepared in order to win that game. Everything that we do this week has got to be geared to winning that football game.” Mullins and Man coach Harvey Arms said there is good and bad about playing such a heated rivalry every year in the opening week of the season. “It has pretty much always been the opener. There is good and bad about it,” Mullins said. “As coaches you always want to have it played later because it gives you time to be a little better and get more seasoned players under your belt. But I don’t think anything can beat the excitement of the Logan-Man game. I don’t think that there’s a bigger game in the state this weekend. It’s a longstanding rivalry and we open with each other right off the bat. It’s usually a tell-tale sign of how your seasons are going to go. You can always draw from this game if you win.” Arms agreed. “There’s two ways to look at it – fan base-wise and football-wise,” Arms said. “From a coaching standpoint you would probably like to have it later in the season. For the fan base and the gate receipts it’s probably better to play it at the first of the season. If you play it in the middle of the season and one of the teams is not doing too well it probably will hurt your crowd.” Mullins had praise for Man’s program and its players. “I think that they are the same way that they always are,” he said. “They are a bunch of hard-nosed kids that are going to come straight at you. They won’t try to be flashy. They are going to try to out-man you. They are going to test your manhood and see how tough you are. You will find out a lot about your team after you play this game. They are just going to come at you and be a better man than you. It’s our job to match their intensity and aggressiveness. If we do we’ll be all right. If we don’t we’ll have a long night.” Mullins said mistakes could cost either team the game. “I think the key for us is just not beating ourselves,” he said. “We don’t need to worry as much about them and what they do as we need to worry about ourselves. We need to do the little things like not turning the ball over and not having penalties in order to win. We just have got to limit our mistakes and play hard and if we do that winning and losing will take care of itself.” The Wildcats met Calhoun County and Roane County in their two preseason games. Mullins said Logan is 100 percent going into the contest. “We don’t have anybody hurt which is the most important thing coming out of the preseason,” he said. “We’re just ready for the games to matter and they start to matter on Friday.” Arms said his team is also healthy. “So far we are in a fine shape heading into the last week of practice,” he said. “We had two kids that were out going into our last scrimmage and we got them back this week. We’re at full-go right now.” The Billies, however, will be without sophomore running back Khris Tolliver, who has reportedly left the team and has moved back to Charleston. Tolliver was expected to be a key player in Man’s backfield this season after the graduation of first-team all-state tailback Andrew McDonald, who rushed for more than 2,200 yards last season and scored 25 touchdowns. “I’ve got no comment whatsoever to make on that. He’s not on our team,” Arms said of Tolliver. “I’ve got 45 good kids out there and that’s the ones that I want to talk about.” The Hillbillies are expected to use a backfield by committee to try to offset the loss of McDonald. Those expected to fill the load include sophomore Mike Spaulding as well as juniors Roger and Timmy Browning and Chris Toler. Senior Keith Conley returns to take over fullback duties left by departing senior Linzy Collins. The Hillbillies return starting quarterback Brandon Duncan, who is in his third season as the Hillbillies’ signal caller. Last season Duncan was 26-for-52 passing for 416 yards. He threw four touchdowns and was only intercepted once. Returning for Logan this season is senior quarterback Justin Taylor, who connected on 92-of-205 passes last season for 1,733 yards and passed for 10 touchdowns. Running backs Cody Baisden and Chris Tolliver are two other key Wildcats. “We saw them a little bit in their scrimmage against Roane County,” Arms said of the Wildcats. “They have a big front line and they have an experienced quarterback coming back. They’ve got the Tolliver kid that runs pretty well. We expect that they will be a tough opponent.” Arms said he’s glad the long summer practices are over. “It’s been a long, hot two-a-day practices,” he said. “It gets kind of monotonous beating up on your own people. When it gets to game time is seems to bring up the enthusiasm.” The Billies played a preseason game the first week at Triple-A George Washington. Last Saturday, Man had short scrimmages against Matewan and Tug Valley. “I think that it’s gone pretty good for us. I think that we’ve had two pretty good scrimmages,” Arms said. “GW’s a Triple-A team and we felt like we held our own pretty well. Then Saturday we scrimmaged a quarter against Matewan and two against Tug Valley and we thought that it gave us a chance to play a lot of people and to evaluate a lot of talent to see where we are.” – Look for the Logan Banner’s annual Pigskin Preview in Thursday’s paper. Story created Thursday, August 24, 2006. Logan third at CC meet POCA By PAUL ADKINS, Sports Editor – The Logan High School golf team made a good showing on Monday at the Cardinal Conference Tournament at the Scarlett Oaks Country Club in Poca. The Wildcats took third in the seven-team, 18-hole match. Point Pleasant High School won the tournament with a team total of 342. Winfield was second with a team total of 349. Logan finished third with 350 strokes. Rounding out the remaining squads were Herbert Hoover, Sissonville, Wayne and Poca high schools. The Wildcats were paced by Patton Couch as he shot a 79. Jarod Adkins had an 85, while freshman Tyler Hale fired a 90, Ross Workman a 96 and Terry Rein a 100. The Cardinal Conference’s eight-man all-tournament team members included Couch and Adkins. The Wildcats’ Coach Motes praised the efforts of his young team for a strong performance in the conference tournament. Story created Thursday, August 24, 2006.