by Tom Condardo
Welcome to the week two roundup. Everyone now has at least one game under their belt so pretty soon we can start getting a handle on the rest of the league.
It was a bad start for the CAL Small with only the Pioneers able to notch a victory. The four other teams in action all lost their non league games. We'll take a look at all of them plus I have a surprise later on in the post. First, the updated standings.
I made the trip to Landry Field to take in the Triton/Amesbury game on Friday night to get a look at the Indians, one of the preseason league favorites. It was a rough night for the home team but a quite a birthday present for Triton head coach and former Pioneer captain and offensive coordinator Pat Sheehan. His Vikings dominated both sides of the ball and rolled to a 40-7 win to go 2-0 on the season after opening the season with a 33-7 blowout of Swampscott. Triton looks poised to make a run in the CAL Large, which is loaded this season.
The Indians fell behind 14-0 after the first quarter and 21-7 at the half. Triton blew it open with three second half touchdowns. The Viking line outweighed the smallish Indian front and was able to match the quickness of the Indian backs. Viking running back Justin Spillane ran for 99 yards and three touchdowns to lead the attack.
It was the first game for Amesbury and that was a factor. The Vikes had a chance to work some kinks out last week, but the Indians suffered some of the normal first game jitters.
Head coach Thom Connors will no doubt get the Indians back on track and they will be a formidable opponent for the Pioneers when the two clash in the league opener in two weeks. Amesbury has speed to burn in the backfield, very similar to Newburyport, and if they aren't corralled, they can break some long ones in a hurry.
Mac Short, a wide receiver last year, played his first game at quarterback for the Indians and was 7/18 for 121 yards, a touchdown and two picks. His running mate Ben Cullen had 61 yards rushing.
But the big story was the local birthday boy who is not totally surprised by the turnaround of the squad which went 1-10 last season.
"I've been excited for this season since Thanksgiving of last year," Sheehan told me. "We have a lot of guys coming back and they were tired of losing. They made the commitment in the offseason. I don't know if I expected it to go as well as it's gone so far."
Amesbury will try to get into the win column when they host Pentucket Friday night.
Hamilton-Wenham, the other consensus favorite in the CAL Small, opened their season Saturday afternoon and ran into a stacked Bishop Fenwick team. The Generals played a good first half and led 20-17 at the break, but the Crusaders unleashed their devastating rushing attack in the second half to run over H-W 54-27.
The Pioneers are familiar with this BF team, led by standout running back Rufus Rushins who rolled for 184 yards to lead a 400 yard Crusader running barrage. BF is a veteran team with many offensive weapons and will be a force in the Division Five playoffs.
The Generals were hurt badly early in the game when they lost Cam Macri, their outstanding sophomore running back to an ankle injury. Without their main rushing weapon, the Generals tried to throw with first year quarterback senior Jack Clay. Clay did a nice job trying to fill the unfillable shoes of Trevor Lyons, completing12 of 19 for 208 yards and four touchdowns.
He had a couple of veteran targets in Pete Duval and Christian Ecker which helped ease him into the starting role. H-W hung with the potent Crusaders most of the way and trailed by four at the end of three quarters. BF exploded for 23 unanswered fourth quarter points to pull away for the win.
The Generals travel to North Reading Friday night for another non-league game as they try to regroup against the Hornets.
Ipswich and new head coach Greg Brotherton, former Tiger standout, opened their season Friday night by hosting the Hornets. The visitors were unkind in Brotherton's debut caging the Tigers 33-7. C.J. McCarthy ran for three touchdowns and threw for another to lead the NR attack. McCarthy has taken over the feature back role from Carl Lipani in the potent Hornet single wing and appears to be catching on quite nicely thank you. Whether he can match Lipani's 138 points last year - good enough for fifth place in Division 3A scoring - is another story.
Brotherton is installing a new spread offense for the Tigers and there will be growing pains. The tenacious Hornet defense limited Ipswich to only two first downs on the night. They managed only 13 yards on the ground and 89 in the air.
Things could get rough for the Tigers this week as they travel to Newburyport to face a Clipper team aching to make up for the loss to the Pioneers last week.
Georgetown became the first team in the league to play two games, but unfortunately for the Royals, they have both been losses. They found their offense this week however, but came up on the short end of a 32-25 loss to Greater Lawrence.
The Royals looked like they might get blown out at the start, but they fought back to get in the game. They fell behind 8-0 but roared back to take the lead on a 35 yard field goal by Pat Bjork and an eight yard touchdown run by Robert Dimento. Trailing 16-11 mid way through the second quarter, Georgetown had the ball at mid field but GL tipped a pass, intercepted and returned it 56 yards for the TD.
On their next possession, the Royals fumbled and the Reggies converted again to make it 30-11 at the half. Turnovers (3 interceptions, 2 fumbles) killed the Royals for the second week in a row.
Georgetown didn't quit and their defense got them back in the game, picking off four interceptions - three by Colby Ingraham. Ingraham then paced the offense with two fourth quarter touchdowns, the second one set up by a 38 yard pass to Bjork down to the two yard line. That was as close as they would get as Greater Lawrence held on for the win.
The 0-2 Royals get this week off to prepare for their league opener against Manchester Essex in two weeks.
After having last weekend off, M/E will visit Greater Lawrence Saturday morning for their second game of the season.
A Look at the Power Rankings
Okay I promised you a surprise, so here goes. As you know, I've been spending a fair amount of time figuring out the new power ratings. So me and my friend Exel, have put together a spreadsheet that I think will let me calculate the ratings. There's more manual work to it than I'd like, but I'll try to keep up with it and see where it takes us.
Remember, this is totally unofficial, but I think I have it right. We'll see how close I am once they start posting official ratings. Here goes nothing. Top eight teams make the playoffs.
So now that we have some real data, we can start to try and put some meaning around this thing. First of all, since no one has played any league games, the rankings are purely by the power ratings. Once we get into the league schedules, first and second place teams automatically go to the top of the list, regardless of Power Rating.
Stoneham currently ranks number one because they played one game and beat Belmont, a team in Division Three, so they earned 12 points. 12 divided by 1 = 12.
Triton has won two games, both in their own division, giving them a total of 20 points. 20 divided by 2 = 10. The Vikes don't have any opponent points since they beat Amesbury who has only played one game and lost, and the other team they defeated, Swampscott, lost again this week so Triton gets no points from them. Note that Swampscott has 3 opponent points although they are 0-2. How? Because they get a point for every Triton win - that's 2 - and one from St. Mary's who has one win for beating them this week. 3 divided by 2 = 1.5
Weston has a power rating of 5.5. They beat Randolph, a team in their own division to get 10 points last week. Then Weston lost to Dover Sherborne this week and since Randolph didn't play, Weston gets only 1 opponent point for D/S's win over them. That gives them 11 points divided by 2 equals 5.5.
As we get into the season, opponent points are going to come into play even more.
The Pioneers' 10 points for their win Saturday puts them in a tie for second place in the division with five other teams. That logjam will quickly be broken as more games are played. There should be even more separation after next week's games. We'll take another look then.
That's it for now. Check back Thursday for my preview of the Pioneers' game against Saugus.
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