By Todd Traub
Leader sports editor
It was a frustrating weekend of football for Cabot coach Mike Malham.
On Friday, Conway flattened Malham’s Cabot Panthers 41-7, and that was followed by a slate of college games Saturday in which all of Malham’s favorites — Arkansas, Arkansas State, Pitt and Notre Dame — took it on the chin.
Actually Pitt started things off with a 31-3 loss to Miami on Thursday, but of course Malham was most concerned with the way his team played, or didn’t, at Conway on Friday.
“We’ve got to get back on track quick,” Malham said. “I think we’re better than what we showed Friday night. We didn’t show much. We didn’t play very well.”
Cabot (2-2, 0-1) lost its second consecutive game and its 7A/6A-East Conference opener. That means the Panthers have six more conference games, and four of those are at home beginning this week with Little Rock Catholic.
“We can still stay in the thick of things,” Malham said. “That wasn’t good what happened Friday night. We didn’t compete and that’s not good.”
Cabot stopped Conway on its first two possessions but couldn’t get anything going offensively. A false start helped kill a Cabot possession that began at the Conway 32 thanks to a botched snap on a punt, but Cabot ended up turning it over on downs and Conway went on to score on five of its next six possessions.
“They played awful well and we didn’t play very good,” Malham said. “It just snowballed. We had chances early inthe game; we had chances to get out on top.
“We had a big turnover on a muffed punt and why we don’t pick it up and score I don’t know. All we do is fall on it and there’s nobody around.”
The more times Cabot gave an explosive team like Conway the ball, the worse it was going to get, Malham said.
“After about two or three series they got it figured out and we didn’t slow them down after stopping them the first three times,” Malham said.
Cabot said the Conway loss was eerily familiar to last year’s 35-7 setback at Bryant, which turned out to be the Panthers’ only loss until Springdale Har-Ber knocked them out of the 7A state semifinals.
Like Bryant, Conway got ahead early, struck quickly with big plays and made it harder for Cabot’s ball control, Dead T offense to get the Panthers back into the game. Cabot’s offensive highlight Friday was Spencer Smith, who rushed for 68 yards on 15 carries.
“It usually works when we don’t beat ourselves,” Malham said.
Catholic is coming off a 31-7 loss to Bryant in the 7A/6A-Central opener. It was the lowest scoring output of the season for the Rockets (1-3, 0-1), who are averaging 25.2 points a game while giving up 36.2.
The Rockets run a Spread offense, something Malham has gotten used to seeing after Pulaski Academy, Har-Ber and Conway.
“They’re spread. Everybody’s spread,” Malham said. “I guess we need to join in.”
Malham was joking, but he was counting on his players to learn from their whipping at Conway and approach this week’s preparation with intensity.
“We’ll find out this week what we have,” Malham said. “Everybody gets knocked down, champions get up and keep on going and the losers stay down. We’ll found out a lot about our chances this coming week.”
