By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
The Cabot Panthers try to continue their great start to the 2013 season when they visit Catholic High on Friday in Little Rock. The two teams are coming off vastly different experiences in week one. The Panthers demolished nearby rival Jacksonville 42-0 while Catholic fell 38-14 to Little Rock Central, one of its fiercest rivals.
The Rockets are under the tutelage of first-year coach John Fogelman, who most recently has overseen the turnaround of the proud Malvern football program. He’s also been an assistant at El Dorado and Bentonville.
Fogelman has installed a base spread offense, but also showed a two-back pistol set last week against the Tigers.
Cabot coach Mike Malham was pleased with how his team stopped Jacksonville’s spread, holding the Red Devils to 46 total yards, but said Catholic does a few things Jacksonville didn’t do.
“They’re mixing things up a little more,” said Malham. “They do a whole lot of things you have to be ready for. Defensively, we won’t really know what they’re going to do until we see them. They sat in a base 4-2-5 against Central, but Central did a lot of spread stuff. If Estes (last year’s head coach who is now an assistant) is still doing defense, they might do what they did last year, but we won’t know for sure until we get there.”
Whatever Catholic did last year didn’t work very well. The Panthers ran up a 28-0 lead by halftime. Inclement weather caused the cancellation of the second half.
Malham also expects the Rockets to be a better team than they were in week one.
“They saw some things they did wrong and they’re going to work on them,” Malham said. “And they have some players. That big old tight end they got (Aaron Hamaker) is a really good hand. And number 17 (D.J. Brown), he got loose a couple times and he can make you pay for letting that happen.”
Fogelman was thrilled about opening with a wide-open spread team, then having to switch gears completely in preparation for the next game against Cabot’s dead-T. But his main concern is getting his own team better.
“Right now we’re just fixing ourselves,” Fogelman said. “We missed a lot of tackles, missed a lot of assignments. It really doesn’t matter what we line up in, we’re not that good unless we can get a lot of things better.”
The head Rocket also said Hamaker may not play on Friday. He was injured early in the Central game and continued to play. He went for tests on Monday and the team is awaiting results.
“It’s one of those injuries where, if the season was on the line, we might send him out there,” Fogelman said. “But right now it might not be worth it. We’re going to wait and see what the doctor says. If he’s cleared to play with 100 percent green light, he’ll be out there.”
Cabot will also be without a starter. Starting offensive guard Devin Crawford suffered a shoulder injury and will miss the next four games.
Central’s speed hurt Catholic. The missed tackles allowed the faster Tigers to get loose in space. When that happened, big plays ensued. Fogelman fears missed tackles against Cabot.
“Obviously we go from one end of the spectrum to the other,” Fogelman said. “We go from a very athletic team to just a grind it out team. You just don’t see that kind of ball anymore. It’s kind of refreshing to see it, but it’s hard to get your own kids to simulate that offense. It’s just hard to prepare for.”
Malham saw what Central’s speed did to Catholic, but doesn’t expect to have that kind of advantage. “We have a little more speed than we’ve had here recently, but we don’t have Central’s kind of speed,” Malham said. “We’re going to have play solid. We went to work on correcting some mistakes. There’s always little things like missed assignments and proper technique that you have work on.”