Posted: Nov 12, 2013
Moge's Musings - November 12, 2013
From the euphoric high of knocking off a Top 10 team, to laying a huge egg by losing to a sub .500 team in one week.
Such is how things have gone so far during the month of November for the Bethany Swedes.
Now, there is one game to go—last place Bethel is up this Saturday in North Newton. Hopefully, things will get rectified so the seniors can go out with a good win after the home Senior Day was ruined.
If it could go wrong for Bethany against Mac, it did go wrong.
Most of the problem came on offense as the Bulldogs stifled Bethany at every turn for 3+ quarters in building a 37-0 lead.
The pressure wasn't coming from the blitz; it was more from just the interior line and the way the corners were playing on Bethany's young receivers.
"Their corners were collisioning (receivers), they couldn't get off the line of scrimmage like we normally can and it cost us," said Swede coach Manny Matsakis.
"We thought we had a solid game plan like we had the week before, but we were not able to execute it."
Now it will be up to the Swedes to see if they can bounce back. They are also down another offensive lineman as Erik Soliz suffered a major injury to his right knee. Freshman Zack Ponder filled in during Bethany's lone scoring drive.
Matsakis wants badly for his team to close the season on a positive note, especially for the seniors.
None of these men were recruited by him or his staff, but they formed the nucleus of his first team at Bethany.
"You'd like it to be a positive for the seniors more than anybody else. You want their last taste of wearing the uniform to be a good one. It's an opportunity that's there for us and my biggest concern is we head down to play Bethel and we say, 'hey look what Tabor did to them last week (76-19 win),' "Well that game doesn't matter and I get really concerned because when you start comparing scores, this team to that team—none of it matters, it's how you show that day, how you prepare every day. It's a process and that's the lesson we'll teach this week."
As we look at the future, Bethany had a goodly number of recruits on hand last week and there will be more coming in to look the place over.
But now is now and the outcome of the Bethel game will go a long way to dictating where Bethany goes the second week of next season.
As it boils down to a final week, the game to view in the Heart of America Conference is also between the ninth and 10th place teams, Culver-Stockton (1-7) hosting Graceland (0-8).
From the Swede perspective, if Bethany takes care of business at Bethel and Culver-Stockton handles Graceland. The chances are good that the Swedes could be heading to Avila next year. Culver-Stockton and Avila would be tied for 8th place in the final HOA standings, but C-S won the head to head matchup and should move ahead of Avila for positioning in the 2014 HOA/KCAC challenge.
Of course, that's going on the assumption that Avila will lose its final game to 10th ranked Missouri Valley, but as we know, funny things can happen in this game.