Sports

CARDINALS HOPING FOR WINNING STREAK TO END SEASON

By Sean Saunders/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Thursday, November 5, 2009 12:21 AM CST

In Week 10 of the regular season, the Star City Bulldogs are the first team to play Dollarway following a Cardinal victory all year.

The Bulldogs are one of the hottest teams in the 8-4A Conference, riding a four-game winning streak. But they face a Dollarway team tonight at Cardinal Stadium that is riding more positive momentum than it has had all year following a 48-0 drubbing at Lake Village on Monday.

“The guys got some morale now, and they’re feeling pretty good about themselves,” Dollarway coach Cortez Lee said. “That’s football. Once you win you have a certain mood about you. You have confidence and you’re more in tuned to getting ready to play.”

The Cardinals (1-7, 1-5), the Class 4A State Championship runners-up the last two years, are unable to defend their title this year after getting eliminated from the postseason with five straight conference losses. But they’re looking to carry a two-game winning streak into the offseason.

While Dollarway won’t make the playoffs for the first time since 1997, Star City has made the postseason for the first time since 2004 and locked up a home game in the first round as at least the No. 2 seed. The Bulldogs (8-1, 5-1 8-4A Conference) need last-place Lake Village to upset Warren for them to sneak into the No. 1 spot.

Star City still has much to play for against Dollarway. A 9-1 finish to the regular season would tie a school record for wins before the playoffs. Star City also hasn’t beaten the Cardinals since 2003, and they kept the Bulldogs from making the playoffs two years ago.

Dollarway’s performance against Lake Village alarmed Star City coach Blair Brown. The Cardinals averaged 12 yards per carry and forced the Beavers into 10 plays of negative yards on the way to giving up only 58 yards of offense.

“They looked like world-beaters the other night,” Brown said. “I think their defensive line was in the backfield on almost every play. We definitely don’t want to take a step backwards this week.”

Star City’s offense has come alive during the last three weeks after it did next to nothing in the second half of a 45-19 loss to Warren on Oct. 3 and the first half of a 16-15 comeback win over Hamburg the following week. The Bulldogs have averaged 34.3 points per game over the last three games, doing it with a balanced attack.

Sloppy field conditions last week forced Star City to stick to the ground in a 28-12 victory over Fordyce. Juniors Demetri Goins and Hosia Rochelle combined for more than 200 yards as the Bulldogs racked up 277 on the ground.

Those same sloppy field conditions forced Dollarway to have to play Lake Village this week. That left the Cardinals with only two days to prepare for Star City and no luxury of a weekend for rest.

“I thought about this team breaking down physically, but we had a mercy-rule clock going,” Lee said. “It allowed us to rest guys and not have them play a full 48 (minutes).”

Brown is concerned with possible injuries against a very physical Dollarway squad before the Bulldogs make their run in the playoffs. But Brown is even more concerned possibly slipping up against the Cardinals and having little momentum heading into the postseason.

“Dollarway doesn’t have anything to lose,” Brown said. “They have enough talent to beat anybody in this conference. As it turned out, they were on the losing end of most of their ballgames, but I take nothing away from them.”

There is also an interesting off-the-field storyline to tonight’s game. The contest will be the first time the two sides have met on the gridiron since Star City earned a victory over the Bulldogs in basketball for using an ineligible player. That same player forced Dollarway to forfeit four conference games in 2008, costing it a conference championship, and Lee believes it was the Bulldogs who reported them to the Arkansas Activities Association.

“I don’t see anybody knocking down our door trying to search for us now,” Lee said. “But I know how life is. I put that behind me because I’ve never been that way as a coach, to worry about what other people are doing. I’m just going to be myself. It’s still in the back of my mind, but I’m not going to use that because our guys know we won the conference last year. No one can take that away from us.”

The irony is that Star City didn’t gain a victory in football and only one win in basketball.

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