Rockies hit the road to face powerful Mishawaka

Courtesy of The Pilot News, photo Rudy Marquez

PLYMOUTH — Plymouth’s Rockies kept the train rolling a week ago with a home win over NorthWood. A senior class that took their lumps as sophomores is showing they didn’t like it.
“We knew this group was a special group,” said Plymouth coach Adam Handley. “We knew it had a lot of athletes in it, and we were trying to figure out the best way to fine-tune what we had and give us the best opportunity to compete.”
“With Exzander (Ramirez) we’ve built the offense around what he does well, our defense is kind of built around what Carter (Bush) does well,” he said. “It’s a total team thing. I think they are buying into what we are doing across the board. Not just the 20 guys on varsity but all 80 guys all the way down to our freshman and junior high teams.”
With all the positives, Handley knows his team has things they can do better and one stood out on film from a week ago.
“The biggest thing was a lack of effort in the first half,” he said. “We came out flat and I anticipated that coming off a big win. After a crazy emotional game like that, it’s hard to come in locked in, and ready. The challenge for the second half was to make sure we were putting the effort in we needed to put in.”
Maximum effort will be required again on Friday as Mishawaka has been as good as usual.
“They are a good team. I know people look at them and so they run the wishbone and we are 2-0 against wishbone teams but what (Mishawaka head coach Keith) Kinder does is not a traditional wishbone,” said Handley. “He’s taken that base but they run it out of some weird formations and they even run some more ‘modern’ stuff out of it.
Our game plan isn’t the same as it has been playing against the last couple of wishbone teams. We just have to adapt. Just like Warsaw, we are not going to stop them under 100 yards rushing. We have to limit the big plays.”
“We have to make sure we aren’t content. We’ve won five games and that’s great but why stop there? There is no need to be content, everyone is excited but why not keep getting better and make sure we are taking care of the little things,” he said “We have to continue to sustain drives. We can’t afford three and outs and we have to finish drives in the endzone.”