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Crown Point (1-0) at Hobart (1-0) |
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Week
2 - Football Game of the Week Preview |
Crown Point (1-0) at Hobart (1-0) |
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8-23-2006
When:
Friday, August 25, 2006
Where: Hobart's Brickie Bowl - Hobart Middle School - 4th ST
Tickets: $5 (for everybody)
TV/Radio/Internet: WEFM (95.9) FM, WWCA (1270) AM, www.USA-365.com
Weather: Again, too hot for football and it will be even hotter and more humid inside the sunken Brickie Bowl. There's not much of a positive spin I can put on the heat and humidity except that the below sea level nature of the stadium will get you out of the sun by game time.
PARKING: There is no parking at Hobart's Brickie Bowl and you can't get too upset about it because there never has been. I have had some success parking what I believe is directly south of the field. There is a street that only has homes on one side and you can park in the grass on the other side in dry weather. In the area around that street there are a couple of banks and offices that are closed by 5 o'clock on Friday and you can park there. Do not park in front of people's homes or driveways in the neighborhood. They do not like it and they may show their displeasure. You've got to get to the Brickie Bowl early and I mean, 6:15 or 6:30 p.m. at the latest. Part of the charm of going to the Brickie Bowl is walking through the dark Hobart neighborhood around the stadium, very much like you walk through the neighborhood to get to Griffith or LaPorte. Most stadiums nowadays are somewhat set apart from residential areas. There is something about walking down a dark sidewalk and suddenly seeing the lighted stadium that is a big plus. Try to make a positive out of a negative here.
RIVALRY: Hobart and Crown Point were only Duneland Conference rivals for a decade, from the day CP joined the DAC in 1992 to the day Hobart left in 2002. So these two schools, which have existed and played football all the way back to the 'Roaring 20's actually have not met that many times on the high school football field. Hobart and Crown Point played just once (in a 1984 playoff game when both teams were undefeated and Hobart won 20-7) from 1979 to 1993 and that gap in the head-to-head meetings was actually good fortune for the Bulldogs. Hobart won 10 or more games 15 times, played in nine state title games and won four state championships between 1979 and 1997. CP had some good teams during that time under the old coach Brad Smith, but they would not have had a winning record against Hobart in the 1980s.
So there really isn't any rivalry here. But it is Hobart, and it is the 6,000-seat Brickie Bowl, the classic Indiana football stadium set in a residential blue collar neighborhood. For half a century, the team so-named because the young local boys who worked in Hobart's brickyards decades ago (it's said that if you dig deep enough under the pavement of some Hobart roads, the brick streets are still there) tended to also play football or have kids who did, was known throughout the top half of the state for its winning football teams.
Coaching icons Don Howell (314-73-2, 33 years) and Russ Deal (114-49-6, 18 years) helped the small Lake County town southeast of Gary's steel mills roll up an incredible all-time record of 528-242-19 in high school football. The tie between Deal and Howell is that Deal coached Howell and that created 50 years of play with basically the same philosophy. Don Howell, who was a 5-foot-9, 210-pound offensive lineman, is credited for introducing weight training to NW Indiana football by installing it at Hobart in 1965. Amazingly, before the 1960's, people thought that slowed you down and would hurt your football ability. It is said that the Brickie emblem, a cartoon figure with a powerful upper body, is modeled after Howell.
Hobart became so dominant that they won 18 consecutive sectionals and dominated the DAC, beating bigger schools, throughout the 70's and 80's. The Brickies were the number one team in victories state wide in the 1980's when they were 118-14. Sellout crowds made the neighborhood stadium in the town of 25,000 the place to be on Friday nights in NW Indiana.
I did not know that Hobart was founded by a man named George Earle who purchased land from the Potawatomi Indians in 1846 and named the new town in honor of his brother Frederick Hobart Earle. The brickyards (places that made bricks for construction) popped up in the late 1800's and that was probably the most significant industry in the town well into the 1900's, providing bricks for projects and construction materials in the Chicago area. The last 'brickyard' descendent, the National Fireproofing Company, closed in 1964.
Truthfully, Hobart ceased to be a major mill area after highways bypassed the town in the 1920's. It became a quiet residential area largely for Gary steelworkers over the next five or six decades. The 'brickyard' legacy is kept alive through the name of the football team as Hobart is a quiet place that isn't known for anything else. The recent parallel in Northwest Indiana would be Dyer, which is know around the state for its dominating state caliber Little League baseball teams over the past 20 years, but truthfully, not much else. Some might cringe at the concept that your town is best known because your youth sports teams can win. But, to be honest, the fact that youth can band together and be successful is not exactly a black mark.
Crown Point defeated Hobart 26-0 in 2005 and the Bulldogs have won five of the last eight meetings. But the all-time series is heavily tilted (45-9-2) in favor of the Brickies and CP is never going to catch up because there will come a day when Hobart will want to play old rivals Valparaiso or Merrillville again. This is already the end of an era for Crown Point at Hobart. Unless construction on the new Hobart high school is delayed, it will open in the fall of 2008 and that's when CP is next scheduled to visit Hobart. 4A Hobart and 5A CP cannot meet in the state tournament and Hobart is at CP in 2007. The Bulldogs will become the first of many teams to know in advance that they are playing for the last time on the floor of the 67-year-old structure where champions walked for decades.
Class 4A
Hobart
Coach: Wally McCormack (20-15, 3 years)
Enrollment: 1,187
2005 record: 6-6**
Sectional titles: (19) 1979-1997 (19 in a row)
Regional titles: (14) last in 1996
Semistate titles: (9) 1982, 84, 85, 87, 89, 1990, 91, 93 and 96
State titles: (4) 1987, 89, 1991, 93
**Lost 32-6 to eventual 4A state champion Lowell in the 2005 Sectional nine
championship game.
2006 Hobart
Brickies
2006 schedule
(W) 45-7 at West Side (0-1)
8-25 (F) Crown Point (1-0)
9-1 (F) at Hammond (0-1)
9-8 (F) Highland (1-0)
9-15 (F) at Munster (0-1)
9-22 (F) ANDREAN (1-0)
9-29 (F) Morton (1-0)
10-6 (F) at Lowell (1-0)
10-13 (F) at Griffith (1-0)
4A Sectional 9 playoffs
10-20 (F) quarterfinals
10-27 (F) semifinals
11-3 (F) championship
2006
Crown Point
Enrollment: 2, 271 - Class 5A
Head Coach: Chip Pettit (34-31, 7 years) 11-1 in 2005**
Championships
SECTIONALS (2) 1988, 1991
REGIONALS (1) 1988
**Lost 16-13 to eventual 5A regional champion Merrillville
DAC games in CAPS
8-18 (F) 17-0 Lowell (1-0)
8-25 (F) at Hobart (1-0)
9-1 (F) at MERRILLVILLE (1-0)
9-8 (F) LAKE CENTRAL (1-0)
915 (F) PORTAGE (1-0)
9-22 (F) at VALPARAISO (0-1)
9-29 (F) at LAPORTE (0-1)
10-6 (F) CHESTERTON (0-1)
10-13 (F) at MICHIGAN CITY (1-0)
CROWN
POINT (1-0) at Hobart (1-0)
Sagarin
computer ratings: CP by 31
HOBART
(8-25-2006) Does that computer rating spread surprise you? Me
too. We'll see. But there's no way Hobart is 3 TDs worse than
anybody in NW Indiana. The Sagarin ratings are not as valid early in the
year as they are at the end of the season and CP has won 11 of their last 12
games. Hobart was 6-6 last season against a weaker schedule than CP plays.
Let's see what the final score is.
Crown Point is not a good match for Hobart, because the usual edge the Brickies have on the perimeter with WRs Michael Brown and Bobby James are neutralized because of CP's secondary strength in seniors Ryan Forney, Matt Ernest and Jon Sertich. Hobart will give the ball to 'the president' 225-pound junior tailback Andrew Jackson, who rushed for 130 yards against Gary West Side in the 45-7 victory in week one (8-18-6).
The Brickies have suspended RB Steve Gascy (6-0, 205) and tight end Garrett Cantwell (6-6, 215) for the first two games of the season and that will hurt them on this night because, despite good passing attacks, this will not be a finesse game. Hobart will rely on senior QB Josh Miracle and senior WR Bobby Brown, both sons of men who played on Hobart state finals teams in the 1980's.
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| QB Josh Miracle #18 drops back to pass in Hobart's 26-0 loss to Crown Point, 8-26-2005. (Photo by Mark Smith) |
Hobart is no longer a running team. Coach Wally McCormack took Andrean to the state finals in 2003 and the 59ers were a potent pass-run assault force. But McCormack appears to understand that you've got to run the ball against the top teams. The most important names on the Hobart teams are the names of senior offensive linemen Donnie Brown (5-10, 260), Roy Hall (6-0, 240), Zack Vurva (6-3, 265) and Nick Helding (6-5, 260). That's a big front wall that can be the base for what ever the Brickies want to do. The big threat for Hobart is sophomore wide receiver Bobby James (6-3, 205) perhaps the first high division I player to come to Hobart since present day coach and Indiana university grad Craig Osika played for Hobart in the 1980's. James caught a 40-yard TD pass last week after catching 47 passes for 651 yards, a Hobart freshman record in 2005. This is supposed to be a very big year for Hobart. Tom Kerr, for 33 years an assistant to Don Howell, returned to Hobart this year as an offensive coach. Former Brickie linebacker Dave Grabczak is the defensive coordinator and Lowell's all-time leading rusher Michael Pickett is the offensive coordinator. Former Crown Point star WR Nick Byrd, who ran a kickoff back 99 yards for a TD that is still a school record, is a Hobart assistant coach.
There are questions of Hobart's line speed and the kicking game is unproven but Andrew Jackson and Bobby James make this a formidable team. The Brickies defense, led by linebacker Stephen Zimmer (6-2, 215) is suspect only because of the graduation of three-year standout linebacker Richard Mitchell and 350-pound nose guard Adam Bailey. This is the first major test for the new brick wall.
Crown Point was ineffective offensively in week one. But the feeling is they won't be for long. Junior QB Blake Mascarello was inaccurate in the 17-0 win over Lowell even though he did throw TD passes to WR Matt Ernest and FB Tommy Parks. HB Jon Sertich ran for 100+ yards, but CP did not dominate Lowell as they could have, and with six Lowell turnovers, maybe should have.
Crown Point's 4th year defensive coordinator Kevin Enright doesn't get enough credit for the Bulldogs' 3-5-3 or '35' defense that uses five linebackers to attack offenses. The '35' dictates play instead of reacting to it and the confusing part is which of the five linebackers acts as a defensive end, or a safety, on which play. With nine 2005 seniors, CP's '35' defense was No. 1 in the state in the category of fewest points allowed for 5A schools.
The Bulldogs' defense is supposed to be rebuilding this year and it may be. But they shut out Lowell on opening night and Lowell probably will not be shut out the rest of the year. The 2006 defense may use a little more four man line, with Zach Cecich (6-2, 220), Danny Byrd (5-6, 210), Nick Hladek (5-8, 185) and Michael Damjanovic (6-0, 225). But Damjanovic will also hang out with linebackers Joe Patrick (6-1, 175), Nick Cottrell (5-9, 205), Lance LaMere (6-0, 185), Tony Conway (5-7, 165) and Andrew Szymborski (6-0, 180). The '35' creates in effect an eight-man run-stopping front and an eight man secondary on every play and you basically have to guess which one you're seeing. The new '35' is young, with a lot of CP juniors and seniors. The Bulldogs may blow some coverages while the team gets experience. But the eight boys in the 2006 front might be a hair more athletic than the front eight who played in 2005 and that's a very dismaying prospect for CP's late season foes.
Crown Point's offensive line averages about 240 pounds per man and they have four skill position players returning. The move of Andrew Krumwied from center to tackle is a natural and creates a dominant right side with Krumwied (6-5, 245), Kurt Wermers (6-5, 270) and Cecich at tight end. Once QB Blake Mascarello settles in, this is a 30-points per game offense, even against a league of 5A schools. CP traditionally does better against bigger, stronger defenses like Hobart than smaller, quicker ones like Lowell.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN: This is a big game for Hobart, their first real game (they walked over Gary West Side) and they have heard all week about how CP beat them 26-0 last year. I think the Hobart line can drive the team down the field early for a TD run from Andrew Jackson and a 7-0 lead. Crown Point will respond with a quick-hitting drive as they try to get QB Blake Mascarello started after an up-and-down first game. The Brickies will have trouble throwing the ball because of CP's senior dominated secondary and their quick rushers. Hobart will lead 10-3 or 14-7 when a turnover, probably an interception will change this game.
The Bulldogs can pass block Hobart's front and Mascarello should have a big game. The Bulldogs will score on TD passes to Ernest, Ryan Forney and RB Tommy Parks. Crown Point's senior skill players will produce in three consecutive TD drives and the Bulldogs will move to a lead of 28-10 or 28-14.
Jackson will clear 100 yards for the Brickies, but I don't see Hobart's Josh Miracle completing passes consistently against the CP secondary. An interception will make it 35-14 and consolation scores will fill out the final. This is one of the few games this year in which Hobart will not have the best set of offensive and defensive perimeter players. Crown Point did not play well offensively in week one and they will be pushed to show something here.
If Hobart can carry a lead into the second half, their offensive line could dominate. But if they have to pass block in a come-from-behind scenario, there will be some problems. And Hobart's defense against CP's senior laden offense is a big problem.
Hobart leads early, but not late. Lots of points go up on the scoreboard because that's what these two teams will be known for as the season progresses.