Bears hope to grab the Orange Bowl

It was an impressive Week 1 for Little Cypress Mauriceville with a win to start the season. This week would be even bigger for the Bears if they can come home with a victory in the annual Orange Bowl.

The season opened at Sour Lake for LCM against the Hardin-Jefferson Hawks. The Bears rolled to a 42-7 victory in the game.

Head Coach Eric Peevey said Little Cypress Mauriceville actually started off a little slow in the first quarter. "With the number of young players we have I knew that was going to happen. We had some mistakes dropped a couple punts which gave the Hawks great field position twice once inside the ten and once at the fifteen. Our defense did their job stopping them making them punt," Peevey replied.

After the Bears scored first their conditioning took over. Peevey explained, "I feel like our summer conditioning and our weights we're doing right now really helped us through that first game. We didn't have any Bears cramp or have any of our kids go out. It just seemed like we were moving at a lot faster pace than the other team. This is something we harped on all summer and it really worked well for us." It is always good to report no major injuries and that was the case for LCM.

Peevey was pleased with the fantastic effort by the offensive line, and the coach praised quarterback Dylan Payne in his first varsity start directing the offense. Running backs Jonah Fuller and J'Lynn Morris got special mentions from the coach.

"We had a lot of young players make a lot of big plays. Our seniors definitely played like seniors. We've got to clean up some things, but I was really happy with the Bears' effort," Peevey added.

The Bears play the West Orange-Stark Mustangs this week. The winner of the game on Friday gets to take home the Orange Bowl.

The Mustangs attack opposing defenses out of the Spread Offense. They will use a tight end and sometimes six offensive linemen.

The WOS offense bases around quarterback Marcus Turner. Peevey elaborated, "Everything runs through him. He's really good at throwing the ball and he's also great at scrambling and running around. The Mustangs have plays set up for him to run the ball. They use multiple backs all of them are about the same and all of them can score on any play. Their receiver Taydren Perrault is very fast, so we've got to make sure that we keep him from getting behind us, and we're going to look for trickeration trick plays, deep balls, things like that. We've got to make sure everything stays in front of us and make them earn every yard they get and we're going to have to fly to the ball with the Mustangs on offense because they're definitely a very fast team."

On defense West Orange-Stark will switch between a four-man front and then will go with a three-man front. The Mustangs will send blitzes off the edge.

Peevey believes the Mustangs' best defensive player is Jalen Gilmore at linebacker. Defensive end Derrick Williams is a very explosive player for WOS.

The Bears' coach pointed out West Orange-Stark will run some man-coverage in the secondary. The Mustangs will use cover-three or cover-four, and they will switch their coverages up which makes it hard for opponent offenses to get a pre-snap read or tendency of what the Mustangs are doing.

West Orange-Stark uses a lot of blitzes. "They going to send the heat and try to get some chaos on your side of the ball which always leads to turnovers and things like that. The Mustangs all run to the ball well. We're just going to have to make sure we don't make any silly mistakes and give them any turnovers," Peevey analyzed.

Little Cypress Mauriceville return a number of players that played in last year's Orange Bowl which was one of the better contests in the decades old rivalry. Peevey believes, "Our kids are understanding how to play in those rivalry games by not getting too high or getting too low, but understand the physicality of this game and how the fans are going to be excited. It's going to be a packed house for our fans and the Mustangs' fans in their first home game so the Bears are starting to learn how to play in that type of atmosphere and use the fans to get the players excited, but at the same point you don't want to get too up and feel like the game is over because the Mustangs showed it last week by coming from behind with a big win."

What are the keys to an LCM victory in the Orange Bowl? "We're going to have to play every down, every snap and not worry about what happened on the last play or the next play it's going to be each individual play. We're going to have to worry about our goals and getting after it and go one play at a time, and that's how you beat good football teams," Peevey concluded.

The Orange Bowl will be played on Friday night. The Little Cypress Mauriceville Bears will battle the West Orange-Stark Mustangs beginning at 7:00 in Dan R. Hooks Stadium on the West Orange-Stark High School campus.