Roseburg looks to clean things up in first road test at Crater
There’s not always a second chance in sports, but the Roseburg High School football team might just get one in Week 3.
The Indians will be tasked with slowing down Crater running back Valentin Rodriguez when they kick off at 7 p.m. Friday at Dutch Meyer Field in Central Point.
Rodriguez is coming off a record-setting performance in a 45-37 win over Springfield last week. The senior carried the ball 60 times for 448 yards and four touchdowns.
While Rodriguez was barreling over the Millers, Roseburg was trying to stop Churchill’s Ceville Pasi, who rushed for nearly 180 yards on 33 carries with three scores.
So for a second consecutive week, Roseburg (1-1, 0-1 Special District 4) will be facing an unrelenting run-first offense.
“It’s nothing new for them. It’s something they’ve seen before,” Roseburg coach Matt Watson said about what the Indians will be facing. “We know what we have to do, where we have to step and how we have to play in order to get the ball back to our offense.”
“I know they have a big running back. They do also have a hurry up offense. We’re not really used to that,” Roseburg junior Drea Burwell added. “It’s just something we’ve got to get used to, stick with our jobs and just do our thing.”
The Indians held tough for three quarters against Churchill last week, but the game grinded the team down and the Lancers pulled away in the fourth quarter. Watson said they’re working to address the players’ endurance ahead of what he expects will be another drawn-out battle.
“We looked at the way we were structuring practices and got some exciting ways to condition that is relative to our development as football players and the kids bought into it. They recognized we’ve got to have this so we can be more successful in the fourth,” Watson said.
Crater is led by second-year head coach Seth Womack, who previously coached at Redmond and Eagle Point, but returned to Oregon after a short coaching stint in Missouri.
Womack said it’s no secret what the Comets will plan to do on Friday nights. They want to establish the run behind Rodriguez (6-0, 210).
As a junior, Rodriguez ran for 1,427 yards and 15 touchdowns. He’s got 703 yards through three games this season and is nearly halfway to his goal of hitting 2,000 as a senior.
Despite the evidence to the contrary, Crater (3-0, 2-0) is not a one-dimensional team. Womack feels confident in his quarterback, senior Ben Higginson, who has completed 60% of his passes for two scores, with three interceptions.
Crater’s defense has improved by “leaps and bounds,” according to Womack, but the Comets have not been dominant. They’ve allowed 22.3 points per game.
That could be helpful as Roseburg tries to get its offense back on track. The Indians managed just 145 yards last week. Watson said they’re still perfecting the new offense installed with the coaching changes this year.
“Reps, reps, reps. As many different fronts as we could look at,” Watson said when asked how the team was working to jump-start the offense. “Just trying to expose our guys to all kinds of different things that a defense might try to do and how we want to attack that. And we feel like we’re prepared.”
Burwell, a receiver on offense, said in order to get a win this week, the team needs to “stick to doing our jobs and what our coaches are telling us to do and playing hard every rep.”
Other SD4 matchups on Friday’s schedule include Springfield at Thurston, Willamette at South Eugene and Eagle Point at North Eugene.
