Week 3 - Football Game of the Week Preview

Merrillville (1-1) at Crown Point (1-1)

A USA-365.com Special Report by Mark Smith

09-02-2009

 

When:  7:00 p.m. on Friday, September 4, 2009

Where: 1500 S. Main, Crown Point, IN (about 1-mile south of the downtown square)

TV/Radio/Internet:  WGVE (88.5) FM,  Radio updates on WLPR (89.1) FM; Live Internet coverage on www.USA-365.com.
Highlights on Lakeshore Public Television (Comcast Cable Ch. 17) at 10:30 p.m.

JV game:  Saturday, Sept. 5 at CROWN POINT - 10:00 a.m.
Freshmen:  Thursday, Sept. 10 at Merrillville - 6:00 p.m.
Numbers:  Crown Point:  Class 5A, enrollment 2,446;  MERRILLVILLE - 5A enrollment - 2,241

Tickets: $5.
Tickets will be available at the gate. Merrillville brings a good crowd but so did Hobart and the 4,800-seat CP stands were not full.  As big as the schools in the DAC are (7 have enrollments are over 2,000), while most games are well attended, few games are truly standing-room only.

Weather:  We all must have done something good because the weather this week has been near-perfect.  Mid-70s is the scheduled high for Friday, which drops temperatures into the mid-60s for the second half.  Pause for a moment and recall past seasons where games had to be stopped for water breaks in mid-summer heat or postponed until Saturday by violent thunderstorms.  What ever happens Friday, no one can blame it on the weather.

Parking:  There was plenty of room to park last week even though the total crowd was about 4,000.  I want to remind you again that there is a new parking lot on the east side of the school building next to the tennis courts.  It's a long walk from there, but not nearly as long as it is from the north end of the high school property.  St. Matthias church lets you park in their lot for $1.  It's a fairly long walk from there, too, but they have a separate exit (for football purposes, the entire school complex enters and exits at one location at the southwest corner of the school campus) and you can't be too upset by giving a buck to the church.

Last year:  Crown Point upset Merrillville on Labor Day weekend 2008 at Merrillville, but the Pirates got even in October with a 42-6 win in the sectional quarterfinals.  Merrillville was the Class 5A Sectional One champion in 2008.  These teams have met twice a year for five years now.

The SERIES:  This is the 11th meeting of CP and Merrillville in the last six seasons and this series, according to CP records, is tied 32-32-1.  This is an interesting series because Crown Point has never been a football powerhouse for any long periods of time while Merrillville, the 1976 state champion and home of two relatively recent NFL players (Eugene Wilson and Jamel Williams), is almost 200 games over the .500 mark since they began playing football in 1944.

Not everybody understands that Merrillville is one of the bedrock football programs in this area and that's a problem of the state tournament format.  Because they play in the highest enrollment class and face the top teams, few Class 5A teams in this area have a lot of sectional and regional titles.  Lowell, for example, has more sectional titles in this decade than Merrillville has all time.  But Merrillville has had only 10 losing football seasons since World War II.  To argue that the 2005 Lowell state championship team or the 2004 Andrean state championship team could have defeated Merrillville is somewhat far-fetched.  The 2005 Merrillville team with Division I starters James Aldridge (Notre Dame) and Dexter Larimore (Ohio State) was superior to the 2005 Lowell state champions.  That Pirate team (which defeated the Duneland Conference champ (CP) and the Northern Indiana Conference champ (Penn) in back-to-back games) won the 5A regional title, was probably the best team in the last quarter century in Northwest Indiana.

I was not aware that the town of Merrillville has no long standing history of being a place at all because 200 years ago, the 31 acres that is Merrillville was a very dense forest and nobody lived there.  Apparently what was originally McGwinn Village was a clearing created in the forest by the Pottawatomi Indians in the 1800s for ceremonial purposes.  McGwinn Village was a peaceful Indian village of hunters and fishermen when the white man found it.

Believe it or not, what is now Merrillville (that clearing in the forest was renamed Wiggins Point) was a wagon train trail (called Sauk Trail in Illinois) stop on the way to Joliet, Illinois.  In the mid-1800s two brothers named Dudley and William Merrill settled in the area north of what is now Route 30 and owned a hotel and store.  Dudley Merrill's son John was a town trustee.
It's my understanding that the name Merrillville is in honor of that family.

Merrillville, almost 100 years later, was still largely forest when it became again, more than anything else, an intersection on a way to someplace else.  More cars pass through Merrillville than almost any other city in the state because of the intersection of US 30 and I-65, which is the main route to Chicago (via I-94) from Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky.  Since it was built in 1956, at least a half dozen major car manufacturers grew up along I-65 and lots of shiny new cars pass through Merrillville every day.

And as you get north near the end of I-65, you can look to the west and that big school that resembles a small college is Merrillville, which bloomed as an athletic playground after a renovation in the early 90s.  I firmly believe that the rise in enrollment at Merrillville (it was at 1,400 25 years ago, now it nears 2,400) is because as you drive by on I-65, you see that huge sprawling school and you wonder what it would be like if your kids could go there.

Crown Point's $64 million dollar palace (not to mention Hobart's $84 million dollar new campus) are not on main highways and can't be seen by passers by.  Professional drivers see Merrillville high school every day.  Some downstate people only know Merrillville as that place with the big high school.

Until Gary and Hammond bring their facilities into the 21st Century, Merrillville and Crown Point will be the core of high school athletics in Northwest Indiana.  These two growing schools are arch-rivals in every team sport and the kids play each other from the time they learn the game.  I have said this before, but if you want to see just one game all year to get the feel of local high school football, this is the game.

5A MERRILLVILLE Pirates (1-1)
Coach: Zac Wells  - 28-11, 3 seasons
Enrollment: 2,241
2008 record: 8-5 (they got an extra win from a Warren Central
                     forfeit but Merrillville was 8-5 on the field)
Sectional titles  (4) 1976, 1985, 1992, 2005, 2007 and 2008
Regional titles:  (4) 1976, 1992, 2005, 2007
Semi state titles: (0) there was no semistate game in 1976.
State titles (1) 1976

5A MERRILLVILLE (1-1)
Duneland Athletic Conference  - (DAC) games in CAPS - all games begin at 7:00 p.m.
8-21 (L) 16-49 Warren Central (1-1)
8-28 (W) 28-14 Andrean (1-1)
9-4 (F) at CROWN POINT (1-1)
9-11 (F) PORTAGE (1-1)
9-18 (F) at MICHIGAN CITY (2-0)
9-25 (F) LaPORTE (2-0)
10-2 (F) at VALPARAISO (1-1)
10-9 (F) at LAKE CENTRAL (1-1)
10-16 (F) CHESTERTON (2-0)

Class 5A Sectional 1
Oct. 23 (F) with Munster, Portage, Valparaiso, Chesterton, Michigan City, Lake Central and CROWN POINT.

 

Crown Point Bulldogs (1-1)
Coach: 53-37 (9 years)
Enrollment: 2,441
2008 record: 3-7
Sectional titles: (3) 1988, 1991, 2006
Regional titles: (1) 1998
Semi state titles: (0)
State titles: (0)
 

5A Crown Point Bulldogs (1-1)
Coach: Chip Pettit, 52-36 (9th year)
Duneland Athletic Conference (DAC) games in CAPS  -    all games are Friday  at 7:00 p.m.
Aug. 21 (L) 19-0 at Lowell (2-0)       
Aug. 28 (W) 14-7 Hobart (1-1)   
Sep. 4  MERRILLVILLE (1-1) 
Sep. 11 at LAKE CENTRAL (1-1)    
Sep. 18 at PORTAGE (2-0)
Sep. 25 VALPARAISO (1-1)
Oct. 2  LaPORTE (2-0)      
Oct. 9  at CHESTERTON  (2-0)
Oct. 16 MICHIGAN CITY (21-0)
 

Class 5A, Sectional 1
Oct. 23 (F) with Michigan City, Portage, Valparaiso, Chesterton, Lake Central, Munster, East Chicago and MERRILLVILLE

KEY FOOTBALL FACTORS

1. Merrillville back at full strength

The Pirates regained the services of Denzel Pierce (5-8, 170), their starting halfback, last week and he scored a TD in the 28-14 win over Andrean.  What might be overlooked in the first two weeks is the three TD passes by new QB Zach Raspopovich, who is 21 of 41 for 295 yards, 3 TDs and two interceptions.  Merrillville will line up in a spread college-style attack and they will test all aspects of the defense.

Kicker Mike Enghofer has a 50-yard field goal already this year and, after allowing 482 rushing yards to Warren Central, the Pirates allowed just 48 yards rushing to Andrean.  A secret weapon is senior Eddie DeLuna (5-8, 146), who caught a 76-yard pass against Warren Central.  Safety Landau Lang (5-10, 180) is considered a small college prospect and new linebacker Kourtney Berry (5-10, 188) is the 189-pound DAC wrestling champ.  Senior Christian Matthews (6-2, 187) looks like he will eventually be a big threat.  The key is the offensive line, which isn't especially big and hasn't been together that long.  You want to play Merrillville right now before they get it all together.

2. Its all on the line

Merrillville lines up James Travis (6-0, 250) and Matt Neal (6-4, 258) on the line in front of linebacker Marcus Howard (5-8, 212) and you figure to have problems.  But the Pirates have allowed 63 points and 800 yards in two weeks, although Warren Central and Andrean figure to have better offenses than CP.  Travis was 44-2 as a heavyweight wrestler, even though he's not truly a heavyweight and he didn't start wrestling until he got to high school.  CP's got to get a standoff with him up from and occupy him on pass plays because he has good speed.

Crown Point's offensive line performed very well in the first half last week and CP should have won easily.  I'm not sure what happened in the second half.  The Bulldogs' running backs did not end up with the totals they should have had.  But the Pirates have more to confront CP with than Hobart did.  I expect the Bulldogs to run on passing downs and pass on running downs but that could be beside the point.  Crown Point has the physical strength to deal with Merrillville, but they aren't quite as experienced as a group.

3. Bulldogs like playing Merrillville

Crown Point has won six of the last 10 from Merrillville and they are very proud of that.  The CP coaching staff has a lot of respect for Merrillville, but they hint that their defense matches up well with the Pirate offense.  CP's 3-5-3 operating against Merrillville's 3-wide receiver, no back spread, seems to work well if the Bulldog offense can get a 50-50 split on time of possession.  You may see the Pirates go to some double tight end formations to handle CP's front.

But Crown Point was without linebacker Brad Pusateri and cornerback Austin Atherton last week.  CP's defense, led by linebackers Evan Wilson (20 tackles in 2 games) and Steve Perillio (19 tackles) and safety Scott Hannon (15 tackles), looks as good as it did last year when that unit kept CP in most games.

Merrillville will provide the most serious threat outside the tackles that CP has seen this year, however.  And it was disturbing that no one from CP caught Hobart halfback Richard Oglesby on his 85-yard run last week.  The Pirates' Denzel Pierce (139 carries, 1,062 yards in 2008) is much faster than Oglesby.

But CP has defeated Merrillville when they had three or four Division I players and this year's team is not that talented.  If CP plays a scoreless first quarter at home, they will feel they can do it again.

The Bottom Line...

CROWN POINT (9-4-2009) This will be a high-scoring game.  Both teams are going to give up some passing yards through the air and the Bulldogs haven't faced a significant passing attack yet.  Merrillville has faced a couple of good passers and they haven't done well, allowing 26 of 52 for an unofficial 290 yards.  As much as the Pirates are working on the mis-direction runs of CP and wide receiver Travis Woosley, he picked up 62 yards on seven carries last week as well as 86 yards on seven catches.  Merrillville will get caught at least once for a CP TD.
But the Pirates' QB Zach Raspopovich is an accurate passer and he'll get the ball to someone like Monte Brown (6-0, 170) or Eddie DeLuna (5-8, 146) for a couple of Pirate TDs.  Mike Enghofer will add a long field goal for a 17-7 halftime lead.

Crown Point will mount a sustained third quarter drive to cut the lead to 17-14 on a run by Cody Bacon, but a long kickoff return and another Enghofer field goal will make it 20-14.  A CP turnover will put the game in jeopardy, but a goal line stand will force Merrillville to settle for a third field by Enghofer and a nine-point lead.

QB Joe Hopson will find tight end Brad Qualizza for a score to cut the lead to 23-21.  But Denzel Pierce will tally the final touchdown after a long fourth period drive to put the game out of reach.  I'm concerned with CP's lack of foot speed on the artificial turf against the Merrillville offense.  They could turn the tide for another upset if they can sack the quarterback and force some fumbles.  I often say that if the lesser team can get three turnovers they can pull the upset and that's the case this Friday.  This won't be a blowout.

But Merrillville has a lot of offensive weapons and potential touchdown scorers that CP just doesn't have right now.

MERRILLVILLE 30, CROWN POINT 21