Week 1 preview: Pioneer’s Berry praises well-coached Lewis Cass

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Lewis Cass at Pioneer, 7 p.m.

Of Pioneer’s 29 players, 21 of them are either freshmen or sophomores. Still, the players understood the necessary effort level in order to succeed at last week’s scrimmage against Northwestern.

“Really, just the intensity that we played with,” Pioneer coach Adam Berry said when asked for the highlights of the scrimmage. “Going into it, we’re a young team, an inexperienced team. Obviously, we have some guys that are returning that were lettermen. But we’re still very young. Before the scrimmage, we talked about just go out and play hard. I thought offensively and defensively we did that.”

Now they will play a Lewis Cass team that beat them 16-0 in last year’s season opener. Lewis Cass has won three of the last four meetings with the Panthers.

Having said that, Lewis Cass started 5-0 last year before losing four of their final five games.

This will be a battle of wing-T offenses.

“It’s a 4-4 look, probably new school terminology a 4-2-5 look,” Berry said of Lewis Cass’ defense. “But just going back and watching their film from last year again against us, their ends close. They’re hard to kick out. They’re taught not to get trapped. And that’s … coaching. And so you have to anticipate it’s going to be very similar this year. They’re going to know what we run. Obviously, they run the same offense.

“It’s going to come down to who executes better, the offensive line or the defensive line.”