Behind The Bench

Ep: 148 – League looks and a monstrous rushing performance

This week on the Behind the Bench podcast, the crew takes a look at the first week of league play for Carson and Douglas football in the Class 5A North. After that, the discussion shifts to Dayton football's close loss to a California team and a monster game on the ground from a Dust Devil sophomore. Also in this week's episode, a look at volleyball results, cross country finishes and what you can expect to see this week in the newspaper.

Duration:: 26m
Broadcast on:: 24 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to another episode of Behind the Bench with Carter Echolas episode 148. I'm your host, Carter E joined as always my producer, Jeff Mulvahill Jr. of Insta Image.com. We are of course, once again joined by Nevada news group, news editor, Duke Rittenhouse to run through this week's episode. Before we get into that, you know, Duke, we gave you a week off post, Carson Douglas, anything crazy happened in your world since the end of the rivalry game this fall? - You know, I'm not sure, I mean, kind of yes and no. I mean, at least the fire is out, right? - It's very true. - That's a little news item for you there. The fire is out. We were just talking off air a minute ago. As far as our sports are concerned, it's kind of exciting that league action has started. I think at all levels, which inevitably we were going to get to and all that. But, and I'll tell you this and maybe I'll throw it back to you with this, that we saw obviously a Carson team that began making mistakes against Douglas and it got out of hand. And I think they had a nice recovery at the same time that I think Douglas is pretty for real. Having seen half of their game against Reno on Friday. And like I said, we'll get to all this, but now I'm thinking, you know, it wasn't just Carson that would have been beaten handily that day. It would have been a lot of teams that were beaten handily. So I'm going to throw it back to you with that so that we can get going on this stuff. - Yeah, and that's perfect. Let's start right there with Douglas Reno. Duke, you were up there for the first quarter. I got there, I think with about four minutes left to go in the third quarter of that game, Douglas ends up pulling that one out 20 to 13 for their first ever League win in class 5A division two. You know, you can throw all the caveats in if it's only the second year and yada, yada, yada. But a big, big league win for the Tigers who are coming up from class 5A division three after winning that league in the regular season last year. I talked to, if you read my story on record courier.com from this past Friday, I think there's a lot to say about the Tigers' ability to win close games this year. They've done it a handful of times already. They did to start the year against Fernley. They lost the close one against Elko and then bounced back and had another close win against Spring Creek like you were talking about. Beat Carson pretty handily and now a close win over Reno as well. I think I'm missing a game in there that was also close. But North Valley? North Valley, thank you. That one, that one they took care of pretty handily as well. I know that final score looks a little closer, but I believe Douglas is up 35 to three at one point in that game. But a 20 to 13 win over the Huskies. You know, I thought it was really interesting talking to head coach Kyle May's post game. He said, you know, I'd seen a lot from Reno's quarterback on tape and I wasn't really sure what to think. And he kind of just got wide-eyed looking at me and he goes, that kid's for real. And it was pretty evident that he is talented. The Reno quarterback is quite good. And, you know, I have to give Douglas' defense a lot of credit for being able to hold them off the scoreboard. The whole time I was there, at least. When I got there, it was 14, 13, and Douglas ended up taking two more field goals there to get to that final score. But, man, what a win for the Tigers. And like I said, they continue to find ways to win late. Here's a quote from senior captain Evan Eumann's post game talking about just that this past Friday. I guess I'll start there. You know, obviously, you guys knew they had two minutes. You need to come up with a defensive stop in order to keep them from scoring to win the game. You know, anything particular running through your mind in those moments? Man, we fought hard all game. I can't begin to start, like, how proud I am of my defense. Sticking through it, even after a few of their scores. I think the grit and determination we have definitely came out a lot in the fourth quarter. You know, putting pressure on that quarterback, making him throw the ball away if he needs to, or even strip-sacking him on the goal line. I just love it. I love it all. The hard work we put in, definitely playing off. One and only league, we're ready for many more games, and we're excited for them. Yeah, I want to know a league, five and one on the year, another close win for you guys. I guess soon you'll continue to find ways to pull out these games late, regardless of how close the score is. Just how confident it's boosting is that for you guys as a team? Oh, it's great. We know that we have the capability to be great. Just be as good as our team last year, and having that confidence going into these games really, boost our morale, boost our energy. And it shows a lot on these big plays, big touchdowns, big runs, anything. Coming up this Friday, Douglas will be at home against Spanish Springs, which, Duke, as you alluded to, these league games could be a really good one. I know last time we said a football game could be a really good one, it wasn't. So take that with whatever grain of salt you will. But at home this Friday, against Spanish Springs for homecoming, I'm going to take a cheap shot here. Let's hope the lights work this year. Just jokingly, the lights went out last year for Douglas' homecoming game, but they still got that in. I don't think that should be an issue this year, but got to make my jokes where I can get them. That Tiger defense is allowing just 18 and 1/2 points per game so far this season. It's been very impressive as humans alluded to. And I think, as you said, Duke, Douglas kind of looks for real. I mean, I know they still got some tough tests ahead of them between Spanish Springs, Reed, Minogue, but three of those next three of their final four games are at home, too, which will be big for the Tigers. And it seems like you feel pretty similarly. Yeah, and before I forget, it's interesting, Carter, you saw some of this, too. Technical problems. When I got there, the lights weren't on at Reno, and the scoreboard was not working. Kind of interesting, right? Did they ever get the scoreboard? It was. Yeah, by the time I was there, the scoreboard was up and running. OK, because it was out. But that was an interesting development there. But as you just touched on, Douglas not only playing well, but gets to return home. And there's no-- the Division II is the top level in the north. There's no going to be gimmies here, but Douglas is kind of for real. There's all kinds of stuff you could throw out here. Defense can keep you in games, you know, Spanish Springs, which appears in your story in Wednesday's paper coming up. Spanish Springs is a rare throwing team around here. I was thinking about this right before we went on air. If you were to take five years of data for our 5A teams, what do you think the run pass ratio would be in five years? I'm going at least 60-40. We tend to run around here. I was going to say higher than that, to be honest. Maybe even higher. First impression. I was probably leaning 70-30 might be a little much, but probably somewhere right in between 60% and 70% running the football. But I believe this year's and last year's Spanish Springs teams are kind of the opposite of that. They line it up and they throw it, you know? I was going to say drop back, but everyone's in the shotgun anyway. So there's a challenge for the Tigers who have shown they can stuff the run. They can rush the quarterback. They kept the Reno Kid moving quite a bit, which I think actually, if I was to point to one thing, might have been the difference. So a good challenge for them. And then trivia note, I think I even threw this out last year, but I think it's fascinating trivia. It's the longest trip in the 5A. You cannot get from Spanish Springs to Douglas. I mean, I don't even know when they're going to leave the school, but it's quite a trip. It is quite a trip. Reno quarterback Braylon Wilson, excuse me, I didn't want to get his last name wrong. I knew his first name was Braylon. But yeah, Douglas did a good job of shutting him down. Ended up really forcing him to move quite a bit. And so we'll see. Are two passing attacks ever the same? No, but it is kind of unique that Douglas will kind of get two teams back to back that both kind of prefer to throw the ball. And that should make for an interesting matchup come Friday against the Cougars. Moving on to Carson and Hug this past Friday, I was there for pretty much the first half of that one. Carson took care of business with a 37-0 win over the Hawks who have yet to win a game this season. Carson moves to 4 and 2, and they will travel to Wooster this Friday for a game against the Colts. The Colts are 1 and 4, I believe this season, and struggling a little bit there. So far they lost in their class 5A Division III opener. To open up league play. Senators threw only two passes against the Hawks. They had no real need to throw the ball. The running game was working just fine. Definitely more than 70-30 as far as run pass split in this one. Carson ended up running the ball 21 times for 251 yards and five touchdowns in that win over Hug. So an impressive bounce back win for the Senators kind of figured that was going to be about how that one went. Credit to Hug, Hug came out and kicked an onside to start the game and got it. So the Hawks were ready to go and see if they could maybe get some momentum in their favor early and steal one, but Carson ends up getting a defensive stop and marches right down the field and scores. And that was pretty much the way the rest of the game went there. Christian Ray with two touchdowns on the ground. Jonathan Alvarado had one. Justin Gonzalez had another one. And JT Heaton also bounced outside for I believe about a 16-yard touchdown run as well in the first half. So all in all, Carson with about 300 yards of offense, they will, like I said, travel to Wooster. And another thing we were talking about ahead of time, Carson starts with Hug and Wooster. And then things get real interesting for them is they then take on Galena at home before traveling to North valleys and it's finishing the season with Damani Ranch. Duke, I'm curious, you know, anything in particular about their final four games, final three or four games that really jumps off the page at you? On paper, you know, 'cause you never know and all that, but on paper, Carson's schedule, league schedule kind of goes straight up, you could argue. And that's if you believe that North valleys has improved, which I do. Wooster got to go into Reno, take care of business, and you're probably the favorite in that game. And so a big one actually back at home against Galena. Galena is your typical Galena, small roster, good athletes, and coming off of the confidence now of finishing second in the regular season, but then reaching the state championship game and all that. Galena does play with confidence and they hadn't beaten Damani Ranch since 2015. And last Friday on the road, and it is a short trip, but, you know, the stands were great, the stands were full, it's a good rivalry. If there's a, you know, a mental aspect to it or whatever, we haven't beaten our rivals since 2015. In fact, they've had a couple frustrating results. And in this game, they took a 14-nothing lead, and then all of a sudden it's tied. And, you know, maybe the Galena teams of four or five years ago would have collapsed, but this team didn't. So that's what Carson is looking at. Then followed the road trip to North valleys. Again, not an easy trip, fairly lengthy. And of course, North valleys with the field points the wrong way. I mean, the whole thing. And then, you know, Damani has never, give me, Damani's played good football for 20 years. Sometimes the results have been better than other times, but it's, you know, plus what do you have to lose in the last game of the season? It's interesting. I do think Carson's schedule trends up. And so maybe starting that off with a, we only had to throw it twice to beat Hug. Maybe that's a great thing. Now you have a good week of practice. You're the favorite against Booster, et cetera, et cetera. - Yeah. And, you know, Duke's a professional. I see he alluded to Galena beating Damani this past week. Of course it was, it ended. Well, maybe not, I guess the clock didn't hit zeros on this play, but Duke's on Matt Rittenhouse with the game winning pick six for the Grizzlies there to win it over. Damani, you know, real quickly, we'll let this go, but just how cool was that for you just to kind of be there and see that? - Yeah, it was, and I think I'm responsible for it too, because I had just hit send on a tweet that said we're going to overtime, basically, because Galena's previous offensive drive had stalled. And I thought these teams are tired, et cetera. We'll go into overtime, which I was already kind of dreading 'cause I think in overtime, when everyone's so tired, it tends to be a mistake that, you know, and I never want to see a high school kid like, oh my God, that kid missed that coverage and my team lost, you know, whatever. But no, the Galena plays pretty good defense. Matt was in the right place, made a good play, and one thing about him, he's a track guy, and if you watch the, if you ever see the video, his legs were already, he jumped, and his legs were already moving before he hits the ground, so he wanted to go down the right sideline, and it was a, yeah, track speed is really neat. I mean, as a, I could go on and on as a, you know, as a parent, you want the kids to succeed. I get excited for the other kids when they do well because I've gotten to know them. And we've got Jeff here, probably from a coaching angle too. You get excited because you like the kids, and you want to see them succeed, and maybe this play you've worked on for six weeks finally works, you know, and you get excited because they're kids and all that. But, so yes, excited from all those angles, shout out to Dimani Ranch, they will be back for sure. Great game, good rivalry. I'd imagine it's a little bit of what like, you know, we talked at Carson Douglas, 12 to 11, 16 to 13, you know, where you just think you're gonna have cardiac arrest, right? And then a kid you know does something good, yeah. It's this kind of surge of this is why we're out here, basically. Yeah, yeah, two teams that, like we said already, Carson will see here shortly in class five, a Division three action elsewhere around the area and football, Dayton and Hamilton played in a good one. Hamilton, a team from California escapes with a 27-26 win over the dust devils. I have to give a shout out to Duke Evans, who according to Dayton's stats, were in 33 times for 338 yards and had two touchdowns in that one point loss to Hamilton, Evo Evans or Ivor Evans, excuse me, had two sacks and 14 tackles as well for Dayton. I believe the dust devils are now two and three on the year. 33 for 338. 33 for 338. 10 yards per carry, right? But how do you do that and only score twice? Did they keep tackling him at the thighs? It's a good question. It's a good question. Lots of long methodical drives, maybe, yeah. Explains, I guess a little bit how you get to 27-26, maybe not a lot of punts in that game. Over to volleyball, Carson volleyball fell to Reno last week. Very curious to see who wins that second matchup, which is coming up awfully soon because the first one was bumped back. Carson volleyball hasn't actually beaten Reno since 2016, but that first or that next matchup will be October 1 in Carson. So that is something to keep an eye on. You may even hear us talk about it again on the podcast. Reno, Bishop Minogue and Carson, all with two losses in league play right now. Of course, like I said, Carson has a couple less league games played because of the fire as we alluded to earlier. Spanish Springs is right behind them with three losses. So the top of the 5A North volleyball standings are super interesting here for the first half of the season. Some more cross-country results that will be in the paper to find all those kind of broken down. The Douglas girls win the lazy 5 invite this past weekend. And then Carson cross-country was down at Woodbridge in a national competition in Southern California. A whole bunch of good results there. And they're kind of tough to judge because you just don't know who a lot of these other runners are and they're broken down into all sorts of different classifications. There's varsity, there's different levels, there's sweepstakes and sweepstakes, obviously being the highest one, which is a majority of what Carson ran in. But they also, I know, got their JV team in there as well and got some good looks there. So running against some of the best times in the country, really, I'm crazy to see some of the guys you expect to finish near the top, finishing middle of the pack, but then you see all the times in front of them that are two-tenths of a second, one second, one second, one second, it's a very, very close race. And I hear a race that's run pretty late at night too, at least on the boys' side there. - It's all, I'm sorry, Carter. It's all relative at the big invitationals. It's hard, like you said, it's hard to know. If you really follow the sport, you can look at some runners you're familiar with. But, you know, we have our Douglas class races, which are always fun, you can take the results from that. And like this woodbridge thing is kind of a similar concept, many, many races. And you can inter, like if you're a junior, you can enter the boys' junior race, or maybe you're a sweepstakes guy or whatever. Parsing all that at the end and figuring it out is very difficult. - Yeah, yeah, it's tough to figure out exactly how things stand when you're comparing runners from countless different states that you just don't know anything about. Otherwise, you can be sure to find all of our prep results in Wednesday's paper and up online, www.navadapiel.com/news/sports. Before we get out of here, we're gonna talk about some college football realignment, which has been, I'm not sure exactly what adjective I wanna use to describe the way the last 48 hours has been. Would you say messy, Duke, is that how you would describe? - Yeah, dramatic, emotional, messy, realignment remains undefeated. I mean, it just, it doesn't matter the level. It's absolutely crazy. And, you know, what helps with our show here is, of course, the Wolfpack as of Tuesday, 9.58 a.m., is still in the Mountain West. But, I mean, I actually, as you are wrapping up that cross-country segment, I logged on to ESPN to make sure I'm not getting, you know, missing the very, very latest realignment news. It tends to happen this way, though, doesn't it? I mean, nothing for a little while, and then chunks of news will come out. Let me throw out, briefly, I'll throw out a plug, too. I've been around Nevada sports for a long time. It used to be actually, you know, something I did as a beat. So, I was able to put together a column for Wednesday's edition, and I just put it up online. NevadaAppeal.com. And, you know, I was able to, I think, to come up with some interesting points about how, where does Nevada fit in and all this? And, you know, one thing I realized is, Nevada joined the 1A/FBS level in 1992. Ever since then, they've had kind of an upward trajectory. They went, you know, they were in the big sky, and then they jumped up. Big West, Western Athletic, Mountain West. That's the last 30 years. That's steadily going upwards. And my point is, no matter how this comes out, I think Nevada's out of room, basically. Even if in the next 10 minutes they accept a PAC 12 invite, what does that really mean anymore? I mean, it's kind of Mountain West 2.0, isn't it? Yeah, it's a Mountain West 2.0 with two extra teams, right? Between Oregon State and Washington State. So, there's a lot going on, and, you know, if you're kind of into this sort of thing, as I've joked before, it just never ends. It keeps on giving. I'm guessing in some shows six months from now, we'll be saying these things except about the high school level, you know, and we'll be able, probably since we know more of the players, we'll be able to have informed commentary on it. But, you know, we're doing the show Tuesday morning. My prediction is, by tonight, Tuesday evening, Utah State, UNLV will have made decisions which will have affected Nevada, which, if you do your first listening of this show on Wednesday, everything I'm saying right now could be like, what a moron, you know, they joined the pack, well, this guy's an idiot. But, that's how quickly it's moving. In fact, I took my work computer home last night because if news broke, I was going to rewrite sections of that column. So, I don't, Carter, what do you think? You're from, I mean, I don't know, you know, you're Midwestern roots and all that. It's not like the Mac, they're not always involved with this. So, you've been a Mac member since the '40s, right? Or at least, right? Yeah, I don't know if I have that date off the top of my head, but it's been a long, a long time. So, when you see this craziness and until recently, the Big Ten was holding fairly steady, it's not, it seems like the Midwestern, what's the word I'm looking for, tradition maybe is close word. It's like, is this whole thing weird to you? I can't say it's weird anymore 'cause it just happens so often. I do, I do wish, and forgive me 'cause I think I've probably said this before in the podcast, but I do wish it wasn't so football involved because there's so many other sports that just get dragged along, usually unwillingly with this. And it, like for instance, the Big Ten with some of these Pac-12 schools doesn't look great that, you know, softball has to travel to New Jersey in the middle of the week from Oregon or whatever, pick your hypothetical there. But, you know, it's been so much of the last decade, if not longer, yeah, I can't say it's unique anymore. 'Cause it just feels odd. You know, you could sit here and joke and you go, okay, South Carolina's playing Oklahoma this week, is that a conference game? And honestly, nowadays you kind of have to pause and think about it. It's not quite so simple as it used to be. But as far as like the Mountain West, like you alluded to, we watched a lot of these teams jump from the Western Athletic Conference or the WAC. And so, I don't know, it's not new. It's not like odd, but it is, I don't know. It's just become so much of a standard today that I guess it doesn't surprise me anymore. But some of the ways they've handled, at least specifically to this realignment with the Pac-6 and, you know, whatever's left of the Mountain West has been a little odd. Like when it initially started and they were like, we don't want the state of Nevada. We'll take everybody else around, but we don't want Nevada and UNLV. That was interesting to me because of some of the history that, I mean, not to, you know, knock University of Nevada here up in Reno, but some of the history that UNLVs had, you would think they'd be, you know, kind of one of the frontrunners of teams that they'd want to pull from the Mountain West Conference and didn't necessarily seem that that was the case originally. And so, it's odd and it's all greed, which is unfortunate, but that is, I guess, the world we live in. - I think you raised a really good point. It's football. This isn't even a men's basketball decision. Yeah, I mean, it's football from beginning to end. Jeff and I actually got like 15 minutes out of this in July when you were gone because it was the conference's fiscal year begins and so technically, you know, Oregon is on one day. They're in the Pac-12. The very next day, they're in the Big Ten and you begin a fiscal year. No, Jeff and I went off on, you know, it's soccer teams that are, you know, traveling UCLA, playing soccer at Rutgers. And I don't think, I honestly, I won't go down this rabbit hole, but I don't think we're gonna have this in four or five years. I think the Olympic sports are gonna maybe reform their old conferences because this is a football thing. And you can't, I don't see taking your tennis teams and your, you know, whatever, your lacrosse teams and making them do this and reaping the benefits of maybe a new locker room is what they're getting out of it. That's it because they're missing class time. They're doing homework on airplanes and it's all from football. And so I'm a huge college football fan, but even I am admitting we've gone way past silly at this point and like I said, in five years, I think all the Olympic sports are gonna look at each other and go, we were pretty happy in our original conferences. Either that or football will break away, the top 60 teams and you end up with the same result. Yeah, it's, you know, like I said, money has pushed all of this, but it is a little crazy that geography. There hasn't been any sort of just like basic, you know, this makes a lot of sense to stay relatively close and not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and travel and time and hundreds of hours in time. It, yeah. - In college sports, rivalries are a real thing too. In a hundred years, a hundred years UCLA and Rutgers will never be rivals. It will not happen. It's an impossibility. You can wish it will happen, but it won't happen. And what you've done for everything, which you were just touching on, is you've taken the geography of the sport and you've ripped it apart so that, you know, Iowa, Iowa State, what, you know, they might not end up playing or then there's other famous rivalries that like Oklahoma and Oklahoma State don't wanna play anymore. - Yep. - Pit and Penn State finally played for the first time in 15 years. I mean, it's ripping these things apart for the sake of a few TV sets. I mean, it's ridiculous. - Yeah, yeah, I think that's a perfect, perfect ending, perfect cap to that. So we'll end episode 148 there. Thank you all for listening. And like I've said a few times on here as well, be sure to check out all of our stories online at www.navadapeal.com/news/sports to get more. That's gonna do it for this episode of Behind the Bench. We'll catch you guys next week. Take it easy. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (dramatic music)