Behind The Bench
Ep: 144 – Fall sports season outlooks, football results and a college coach shoutout
Carter Eckl and Jeff Mulvihill, Jr. run through the past week of the prep sports slate as Northern Nevada starts to get a better look at the landscape this fall. The duo go over football results from this past weekend, upcoming games this weekend and a Douglas football grad getting some love from his head coach as a true freshman. That plus a discussion on boys soccer and volleyball from the past couple of days.
- Broadcast on:
- 27 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) - Welcome back to an episode of Behind the Bench. I am your host, Carter Eckle, joined always by my producer, Jeff Mulvahill Jr., this episode, 144, still kind of surreal to say numbers that high, that were the triple digits here, Jeff. But we got some football breakdown for you guys. We got a quote or two here on the pod. We'll talk about a little soccer action. We got to see yesterday as we taped this year, Tuesday morning and then some of the stuff you can expect to see in the newspaper this Wednesday and this coming Saturday. But first, you know, got to start with Carson High Football off to their first two and a start since 2012. The Senators beat Spring Creek last week, 34 to 15. And once again, their defense has kind of been there jumping off point for them so far this season. They forced, you know, something like 11, 12 turnovers through the first two games. Only, you know, give it up, one or two back. They're quite a nice plus turnover differential, excuse me, for the Senators, including last week where Cacoa Mitchell, J.T. Heaton and Riley Loff all had interceptions. And then of course, Caden Wilcox, Christian Ray, J.T. Heaton and Ian Thomas, all with fumble recovery, Christian Ray returned his, about 65, 75 yards for a touchdown. You know, getting some scoops on it yesterday, it sounds like he just took the ball from Spring Creek ball carrier and said thank you very much and decided to run 75 yards the other direction for a touchdown. So pretty impressive stuff from the Senators who will get a really good test this Saturday in Highland out in Pocatello, Idaho. Highland coming off the Class 5A State Title in Idaho. They also beat Legacy last week. Legacy won the Class 5A Division III State Title over Galena last year here in Nevada. So Highland's seen the best team from last year in Carson's division and now they'll get the Senators. So gonna be a good test there. But yeah, if Carson's defense can keep playing the way they've looked in the first two games, Highland's gonna have their hands full. That is to be determined, obviously, an 11-hour bus ride to Idaho is a little bit longer than the, you know, five-ish, six hours to Spring Creek. So we'll see how good the Senators are at handling long trips on the bus. I'm always curious to see how coaches and players kind of try to fill time when road trips are that long 'cause, you know, the Vegas one players and teams are kind of, I suppose, used to doing at some point in their lives, but, you know, that's seven and a half hours. So when you start pushing an 11, whoo, those are some long road trips. But that is a Saturday game there. We'll run through some stats for Carson High Football here against the Spring Creek. Here's your friendly reminder that's been in the paper twice a week, that stats either need to be on max preps or submitted to me via email. That's C-E-C-K-L at NevadaAppeal.com or sports at NevadaAppeal.com, I will get it either way. But if there aren't stats posted and aren't submitted, they're not gonna make the paper. I just, I can't keep track of everything going on. And so that is a necessity moving forward. So we do have some stats for Carson High Football. Appreciate those getting up in a timely fashion. Drake Hardcastle finished with 117 yards, two touchdowns through the air and interception. One of those touchdowns went to Ethan Hendy right before the halftime buzzer sounded. Hardcastle was able to get out of the pocket and kind of buy themselves some time and was able to throw it over the top of a Spartan defender hitting Hendy right in the hands before the, right before the first half ended there, excuse me. Otherwise on the ground, the senators had quite a few touches but finished with 96 yards on 30 carries amongst seven or eight different running backs there. Zach Eaton also caught a touchdown pass from Drake Hardcastle as well. Ethan Hendy led the way with 49 receiving yards. Otherwise, like I said, the defense has been, has been incredible early on. JT Heaton finished with 13 tackles. Ethan Hendy had eight. Jonathan Alvarado had eight. The team is a hole finished with six tackles for loss. You add on forcing seven turnovers. That's a recipe to win. Pretty much every game you play in. There's, you're not gonna lose many games where you force seven turnovers and get six tackles for loss as well. So an impressive start to the senators who I can tell are fired up that they've made some, some history here to start things off. Now, you know, some of those 2012, 2013, 2014 teams had good starts this season. They just didn't start 2-0. But Carson's got a chance to go 3-0 this week, which would be the first time since 2010. That has happened, but be sure to stay tuned to our coverage online. And of course, you can follow me on Twitter for updates Saturday. That's gonna be @CarterEckleECKL. Over on the a little bit south of here, Douglas traveled out to Elko. No stats from the Tigers. So we'll just run off what I was able to see on NFHS, which is always a gamble. Wasn't able to watch any of Carson Spring Creek on an NFHS, which is what I mean. That was in technical difficulties throughout that game. But from what I could see through the one security camera for Douglas Elko, that definitely had seen some water recently, 'cause it was a little blurry. You know, the Tigers were able to move the ball just like they were, it gets firmly. It's just kind of being able to finish off drives with points and then not, you know, make mental mistakes and shoot themselves in the foot. There's, you know, ended up with some personal foul penalties that put them in some tough spots. And according to Elko, stats, Elko ran for 270 yards on the ground. So that'll be something that the Tigers will definitely want to clean up. Of course, the Tigers are at home for the first time this season, they will take on Spring Creek. So Spring Creek getting the Carson Douglas games out back to back, of course, that game will be in Minden. So Spring Creek will be doing that drive. And as we know, the 3A schools are plenty used to making those long drives westward. It should be a good game for the Tigers. I know they're anxious to get to play on their home field. They will also be inducting their five members into their Hall of Fame, their football Hall of Fame. So keep a lookout for that. Those names can be found in Wednesdays paper and up online as well on recordcurrier.com/news. Backslash sports as the Tigers look for their second one of the season, they currently sit at one and one. Another update from Douglas football, Trace Estes, who's a freshman walk-on up at Nevada, actually got some love from Nevada head coach Jeff Chope this past Monday. Here's a quick sound bite from that press conference. A guy kind of like it's Trace Estes. The kid from Douglas County, like he's a big target and he's got some stuff to him, you know? And so, but I don't know that those guys will, you know, maybe as the season goes on, but they'll be ready, they'll continue to improve. That quote comes courtesy of Colo's Kurt Schroeder. So I appreciate the heads up. But pretty cool to see Estes get some love, especially real early on. I mean, they, as a true freshman, they've played one game and he's already getting some high praise from his head coach. So that's pretty cool to see and we will definitely be sure to keep an eye out on some of the other local guys who are making a name for themselves. Saw Chris Molly playing on plenty of kickoffs for Nevada this past week against SMU. Boy oh boy, Jeff was cold for that game. I was there a little early, got rained on the whole time and stayed pretty wet throughout the majority of that one. But a fun, really fun game nonetheless. The Wolfpack put together a good product for the opener and nobody with that program will tell you they care whatsoever about moral victories. But I kind of think you got to take it as one. I mean, you, you, 28 point underdogs and you lead for three quarters, that's something. Sure, you could say what you want about the fourth quarter and not going their way and, you know, they didn't end up with a win, which is again, why moral victories only count so much. But still, I mean, just an impressive showing from a team that only won two games each of the last two years and you know, we obviously had Duke on last week and he was talking about how their team over under win total this year was two and a half. If they play like that, they're, that'll be an easy, be easy, at least three, four or five wins. And I don't think there's too much argument against it. Obviously, it's a long season though. Not saying they're gonna come out looking like that every, every game, but boy oh boy, it's a, it's a good first impression for, for Jeff Chod and what, what they've done there. And I think it says a lot when they have their own players postgame coming out and saying immediately that last year's team would have quit in a spot like that. Like I think that's really telling. So Wolfpack football fans could have some, some fun this year, you know, again, does it result the bowl game? Does it result in a winning season? I don't know. Do you necessarily have to go that far this early? No, so, but the fact that they only lost by five and it took SMU down to what their final drive of the game in order to score that game when it touched down, that I think says a lot about where the Wolfpack have come from the last two years to this year. So a good result there and I'm sure anybody going to games in the future will be a little bit warmer unless it's, you know, November. So, yeah, that's always a possibility around here. And it was snowing up in Tahoe. So if that says anything to what the conditions were all hike out in Northern Reno. Anyways, moving on to Carson High Boy's soccer. They got a two zero win last night over Reno. They moved to three and one on the year. Johan Leeseraga scored their first goal with a nice little move using his right foot to find the far netting. And then one, I agree, Gutierrez scored their second goal off a pass from Jonathan Hernandez. Really nice over the top pass that hit Gutierrez pretty much right on the feet, if I remember it correctly. And he was able to bury the insurance goal for the senators. Both those goals came in the second half. So zero, zero game at half. I don't think anybody really established too much in the first half, but the senators were definitely able to prove they were the better team at least Monday night with the two goals. In the second half, 55th and 62nd minute. So pretty quickly together there. Like I said, the senators are sitting at three and one so far this season. I'm curious, Jeff, if there's anything you saw either last night or from, 'cause you've gotten to see them previously. That was my first look at the senators this year. That has impressed you or things you've noticed here. - Well, one thing to for sure consider is they had two starters out. One on injury, one on red card. So the prior game, you could really feel when that red card occurred. It just, there was like a hole in the middle of the field and they didn't play it. The players that came in for him, they played well, but they're also not a seasoned starter. You know, they're both seniors. So that will make a difference. Really clogging up the back and making it more difficult. I thought the defense handled things well. - Yes, they Reno had some opportunities, but they weren't. They couldn't do anything with them, which is varsity soccer. You've got to put away chances. You just have to, or you're gonna pay the price. - Yeah, that's early in the season. So you never know what comes around the next time they run into each other. But yeah, definitely something that we've seen plenty of where if you're not able to capitalize, the better team on that night will make you pay for it. And that was definitely the case for the senators who I think are kind of optimistic for this season. You know, it's always tough. I always like to put, I shouldn't say like to, but I always put coaches in tough spots 'cause I'm curious what they think the league is gonna look like and where their team stacks up in the league and as we talked about last week with a little bit of volleyball and I will talk about here again. And same thing with soccer. The league might just be a little random this year. Might be quite a bit of parity. Might be tough to really tell who's gonna be the top dog of course the senators lost a hug to zero last week. So I think it's pretty safe to say that the Hawks will be up there. Sparks beat Douglas eight zero last week but then turn around and fell to Galena by a few goals. So Sparks won the regional title last year. So in theory, they were the shoe in but if they're gonna lose, I think it was four zero to Galena, then maybe not. But again, it's still late August. So there's plenty of time for teams to get it together and much like if Carson's misses to players who knows what other teams look like as well. So always something to keep an eye on early but those results still matter. They still are important early on in the season. So something to stay tuned to and of course you can do that through the Nevada Peel website, Nevada Peel dot com, backslash news, backslash sports. This past weekend, you could find the Douglas Volleyball season outlook and what that team will look like this fall in the newspaper. Of course, that is up online as you are listening to this but coming in Wednesday's paper, you can get a Carson high volleyball outlook as well. Another league that seems to be wide open, the five A North girls volleyball side of things. McQueen took down Carson at the end of last week in four sets three to one but the senators beat the Lancers up in the Yarington tournament when the senators went and won that. So we'll see what happens the next time they meet but McQueen's sitting at nine and one right now as far as overall season records. So the Lancers are looking good but you know, Bishop and nose got a loss, Reno's got a loss in league already. Not something I think most people expected to see, at least I certainly didn't. So curious to see again how another league shapes out that could just be a little different than what we're used to seeing in years past. Of course, Spanish Springs ended up winning the regional title last year in volleyball so they could be another team to be here in the North. Otherwise, that's I think gonna do it for this week's episode, Jeff unless there's anything else you wanna touch on before we get out of here. Keep it short and sweet this week but plenty more to come. And like I said, be sure to stay tuned online for all of our season coverage here early on, especially football coming around on Friday and Saturday. I will be of course down in Minden for Spring Creek at Douglas and then we'll do my best. If I can find a stream to watch Carson and Highland on Saturday. Otherwise, that's gonna do it for this episode of Behind the Bench. Thanks for listening and we will catch you guys next week. Take it easy. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (logo whooshing)