Columbus East’s Kamden Shelley lunges towards the end zone while in the grasp of New Albany’s Carter Rice Friday at Columbus East High School.
Tommy Walker | For the Republic
Columbus North will look to get back in the win column, and Columbus East will look to continue its momentum in Week 6 of the football season.
The Olympians host Class 5A No. 11 Floyd Central at 7 p.m. Friday. The 6A No. 12 Bull Dogs will travel to Terre Haute North for a 7:30 p.m. start.
East (3-2, 3-0) took care of business on its home turf last week with New Albany 49-28. Floyd Central (4-1, 3-0) also is undefeated in the Hoosier Hills Conference. The teams have an opponent in common. The Olympians defeated Seymour on the road 49-34 Sept. 5, and Floyd Central defeated the Owls at home 42-14.
“They’re always well prepared, and we were able to go down there last year and kind of sneak one out,” East coach Eddie Vogel said. “I don’t know if that was expected, but that was a weird week last year. That was the hurricane week. We know we’re going to get their best. We know they’re a good football team. We can see that on film, but we’re just trying to control us right now and get better ourselves.”
The Jeff Sagarin Rating has the Highlanders as a nine-point favorite.
“I do like that they have to get on the bus and come up here,” Vogel said. “We’re going to prepare our best to be out our best on Friday.”
Columbus North’s Ezekiel Scruggs runs toward the end zone after breaking a tackle against Southport Sept. 8 at Columbus North High School.
Tommy Walker | For the Republic
North (3-2, 1-0), meanwhile, got off to a blazing hot start the first three weeks, averaging more than 51 points a game and allowing four points a game. The past two weeks told a different story. The Bull Dogs fell back down to earth after being routed by much tougher competition at 4A No. 9 Roncalli 41-20 and 6A No. 4 Carmel 56-7.
This is the third week in a grueling four-week stretch of games for North. Friday’s Conference Indiana matchup with the Patriots (0-5, 0-3) won’t be the type of competition the Bull Dogs played the past two weeks, but they still want to play to its full potential.
“I think the big thing is to not have an overreaction to playing two really good football teams,” Columbus North coach Logan Haston said. “We know we didn’t play to our level the last two games, but we are also aware of the competition level we were against. For us, we use that as a phenomenal experience to learn where our shortcomings are and improve on those. Hopefully, this week, we can get back to our winning ways and clean up some of those things that have been problematic for us the last two games and come out with some success.”
The Sagarin Rating has the Bull Dogs as more than a 35-point favorite over Terre Haute North, which has been outscored 261-35.
Should Columbus North get the victory Friday, it likely will set up a Conference Indiana showdown with Bloomington South the following week.
“We gotten through the non-conference games on our schedule, and so now for us, everything is shifted to, we’re in a four-game schedule now, a four-game season to go win the conference title,” Haston said. “This is the next step in that journey. We have a tough challenge ahead of us, travelling a long distance, playing on a grass field that we’re not accustomed to where it’s going to be a wet, sloppy mess. There’s a lot of adversity with this game, so our guys are focused on it, and we know we’ve got a big one next week, but we’ve got to keep the focus on the task at hand.”
