Cedar Catholic is preparing for rematch

HARTINGTON — Cedar Catholic put together a nice run to close out the regular season, winning five of their last six games.

Cedar turned a slow start around to become one of the 16 best teams in C2, finishing second in District 3 after the Trojans rolled to a 56-7 win at Stanton last week.

The win streak was good enough to propel the Trojans into the playoffs.

Now?

Things get real as they take on Oakland-Craig to kickoff the playoffs against a team that dominated the Trojans, 50-13, Sept. 6.

These two teams, and especially these two coaches are used to each other.

The two squads have met seven times since the series started in 2010. The Knights own a 4-3 edge in the series. The last time the two teams met in the playoffs was in 2014, when Cedar earned the win.

This year’s O-C team is very stout.

“Oakland is a very good fundamental team that isn’t going to beat themselves,” Cedar Catholic head coach Chad Cattau said. “When we played them earlier this year, we got down 21-0 early and we couldn’t overcome those deficits. Oakland is a team that will run the ball inside and outside and also mix in play action passes to try and keep defenses off balance.”

Cattau said his team must compete on every single play.

“It will be very important for us to win first downs on both sides of the ball and to have success on our special teams. If we can do that, we will put ourselves in a good position.”

It doesn’t hurt that the Trojans have entered the playoff-fray winners of five of their last six games, including the win at Stanton.

Putting it all together against Stanton can only help the Trojans as they prepare for this week’s game.

“This effort should give us a lot of confidence going in against Oakland,” said Cattau. “We started out with a three and out on defense and then we scored on the first play to really set the tone for us for the game.”

Cedar’s line play proved its dominance early against Stanton.

“We were able to really control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and that really helped us a lot. We were able to rush for close to 400 yards on the game and Jacob Keiser averaged 30 yards per carry.

“We also held Stanton to under 100 total yards through three quarters. The special teams also came up big with a blocked punt by Hunter Thoene and we were perfect on eight PAT attempts.

Other side of the bracket: No. 10 Centennial (6-3) at No. 7 Doniphan-Trumbull (8-1)