Who: Orrville Red Riders (0-1) vs. Triway Titans (0-1)
Where: Triway Stadium (Directions here)
When: Friday Sept. 4th, 7pm
All Time Series: Orrville leads 31-5 (Series detail here)
Last Meeting: 2008 (Orrville won 34-13)
Last Week: Orrville lost to Northwest 40-14, Triway lost to West Holmes 28-27
Coach Records: Doug Davault is 23-11 and in his 4th season as head coach of Orrville. Tony Lee is 0-1 in his first season as Triway head coach.
A lot going on in this traditional matchup of county schools, rivals, and region 14 members. Both the Riders and Titans come in licking their wounds. Orrville dropped their season opener to Northwest, giving up 40 points...while Triway lost a 27-7 4th quarter lead to West Holmes, losing 28-27.
Titan head coach Tony Lee is seeking his first win as Titan coach, and what a first chapter he'd write if that win came against the hated (not my words) Red Riders.
The Riders have won 4 straight against the Titans, the last 2 being by 20+ points each.
What it means for Orrville: The Riders get 3 players back who missed last weeks game. All 3 are starters, and all 3 are seniors, so that alone should give Orrville fans some confidence heading into this game. A win gets Orrville back on track and steamrolling ahead to a potential week 4 showdown with Lexington. A loss to Triway will raise some SERIOUS (and when I say serious...I mean SERIOUS) questions about this team. To have a team with this much hype potentially start 0-2 would be disastrous.
Having Chase Hoobler back will be very encouraging for the Riders, he's battled a bruised shin all pre-season but if he's anywhere close to 100% on Friday night, it spells nothing but bad news for the Titans. It will be interesting to see how Chase reacts once the shackles are removed.
What it means for Triway: Assumed by many, but confirmed by Triway superfan Andrew Marcum....this is Triway's superbowl. They'd rather beat Orrville than any other team on their schedule. Here's some more from Mr. Marcum on what the Orrville game means to the Triway fans and players.
And wait, there's more...if you thought it was just football, you'd be sadly mistaken."I hate Orrville like I hate the Pittsburgh Steelers (as a Browns fan)
or the Michigan Wolverines (as a Buckeyes fan)."
There you go Riders...you're hated. We may consider Wooster our rival, but Triway is a close 2nd. Do not take them lightly, they'll play with passion and play until the last down. You have a target on your backs, wear it proudly and go out and prove to Triway that 31 wins out of 36 games is no fluke, it's simple dominance. But be aware of the fact that every one of Triway's 5 wins in the series nearly outweigh our 31 wins. It's THAT big of a deal to their team, school and community. I remember having to walk out of Triway Stadium in 1993 when they beat us 26-22....it was not fun. And we all remember the feeling of walking out of the Pit or the Canton Fieldhouse after a loss to Triway in basketball. It just plain sucks. Let's not go down that road again."They're still our biggest rival in all
sports; any win against them in basketball or baseball or track or
cross country or tennis or golf of voleyball, no matter if we're
always the favorite or always the underdog, is treasured... just 'cuz
it's Orrville."
Seriously, Andrew is a real good guy, and that was all in fun. We're rivals on different sides of the fence, so of course we're going to have VERY different views of the rivalry. I'm sure there are plenty in Orrville who dislike Triway very much too.
Here's Andrew's "keys to a Titan win."
"In order for Triway to win, we'll have to limit mistakes, first and foremost. If we turn the ball over, the athletes on Orrville's offensive side of the ball will be too good to contain if we give them too many chances. Triway will need to pass to win, because we can't match Orrville's size on the line and at linebacker. We have the athletes to go 1-on-1 with anyone, except maybe Orrville (fully-staffed). We have handled defensive pressure very well, which is great, because Carmichael is very dangerous (and accurate) when he has time. But even when he doesn't have time, he's very, very smart and makes quick reads and almost always gets the ball to the right receiver. We can't drop passes!Very good analysis....Triway certainly has some athletes in their secondary, and we got a closeup look at Cole Drake's talent last year, so anyone expecting an easy night for the Riders might be in for a surprise.
On defense, we will need to stop your running game. I think even though we had troubles against West Holmes with 3rd down pass defense, our secondary is very, very good and will make a lot of big plays for us this season now that they have a game under their belts (all are playing new positions - Drake (CB) and Polen (LB) both at safety now, and Carmichael (n/a) and Houmard (soccer) at CB. All 4 are very good, just need to get used to playing with each other. I think they will be ready, now. Up front we have been surprisingly good. We expected Butcher and Myers to do well, and they have... but Cody Gessel has been a surprise as well! Our young linebackers still find the ball well.
Lastly is the field position battle, which will be key! Orrville still has big play ability, so we cannot give them the ball within striking distance. Force them into long drives. We didn't punt well; but if we do, our defense will be tough to sustain drives against, IMO.
Prediction
Mine. 29-12. Riders jump out early and talent takes over from there. I just think we're deeper, bigger, faster and more experienced than the Titans this year. We'll look good at times and bad at times, but it will be enough this week.
I'll even go as far to say that if we lose to Triway, I'll display the proud purple on this website until our week 3 game with Copley. The Triway colors will take over Red Rider Sports Blog for 1 week. That simply cannot happen.
Mr. Marcum believes that if Triway is to win, it will be a close game, 26-24 Titans.
Calpreps.com says 28-17 Riders. I had no looked at that score until just now, but it's very close to my prediction.
I'm guessing the Daily Record predicts the Riders to win by a 7-2 count.
2 comments:
That is what playing Orrville meant to ME when I was in high school. It was easily our biggest rival, and nothing else was close. I obviously still carry that with me today, but I'm not so sure the kids do that are playing. Fairless, Manchester, and West Holmes seem to be bigger for them now than they were when I was in school, even though WH was still #2 on our list way back when. Sadly, we didn't have Orrville NOR West Holmes on our football schedule my senior year, which was very disappointing, in addition to not being in a league, either... such a disappointing outlook to a season.
I played in that 93 game as a junior when we lost to Triway and it still burns my #ss! However, they did go to the playoffs and had a great team that year...but we should have won (shoulda, woulda, coulda)!
As far as a rival game, it was in basketball, but in football you just didn't want to be that 1 of 5 teams to say you lost to the team in purple. We would get up for Triway, but not like a true rival game (Wooster).
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