September 17, 2018 at 12:53 p.m.
The Bell strikes twelve
Antigo makes it a dozen straight wins in rivalry game, beats Hodags 24-13
The Bell strikes twelve
The Red Robins scored twice in the second half to rally from behind and defeat the Hodags 24-13 at Schofield Stadium in the 84th contest for Gene Shepard's Bell. Korbin Krueger put Antigo ahead on a seven-yard run with 44 seconds left in the third quarter and the Red Robins tacked on an insurance touchdown midway through the fourth.
The win was Antigo's 12th straight in the Bell Game, and 55th overall in a series that dates back to 1935. Antigo's current win streak is one off the all-time series record of 13 straight wins set by the Robins from 1961-1973.
Friday's game was much more competitive than the 48-7 lambasting Antigo put on Rhinelander last year at Mike Webster Stadium, but that was of little solace to the Hodags afterward.
"It sucks. I told (the team) I can't make you feel better tonight, but I can assure them that we're going to get back to work," Hodag coach Chris Ferge said. "I'm not afraid to get back to work and that's the message that we have to have going forward."
Rhinelander led 13-12 at halftime, but stalled out on its first two possessions of the second half. Antigo, using its traditional Wing T attack, got its ground game going late in the third and marched down the field on five plays late in the third to set up Krueger's winning score.
Rhinelander responded with a drive down to the Antigo 27, but Drake Martin was stopped a half-yard short on fourth-and-2. Antigo then marched down the field in seven plays, scoring an insurance touchdown on a one-yard keeper by quarterback Nevin Cornelius with 5:46 remaining.
Though Rhinelander held Antigo to 209 yards of offense, the Robins averaged just more than four yards per carry and made several key conversions in the second half to keep drives alive.
"We need to push back on the blocks and tackle downhill. We're not doing that 100 percent. When we start doing that as a team, then we'll be scary," Ferge said.
The game could not have started much better for the Hodags, who got a gift when the ball slipped out of Cornelius' hands on a third-down scramble, which Martin recovered at the Antigo 25. Six plays later, Martin scored on a two-yard run to give Rhinelander the lead.
After Antigo tied it on a 16-yard run by Dominic Smith late in the first quarter, the Hodags went on their longest drive of the night, covering 71 yards on eight plays to set up a Brock Lieder four-yard run that put them ahead 13-6. Antigo responded again on a Krueger 3-yard run that brought the Robins within a point later in the second quarter.
Rhinelander outgained Antigo 298-209 in the contest, led by a 143-yard effort on the ground by Martin, who had one touchdown on 30 carries. Smith led Antigo with 13 carries for 128 yards while Krueger added 18 carries for 98 yards and two scores.
Blindsided
Rhinelander had two chances to extend its lead before halftime and both went awry. The first came when Cornelius was sacked and stripped by Lieder and Martin on a fourth-down play in Rhinelander territory. Drake Martin picked up the loose ball at the 40 and ran 60 yards for an apparent touchdown, but it was wiped off the board when Walker Hartman was called for a personal foul for a block in the open field on lineman Tyler Schroepfer.
The officials deemed Hartman's hit to be a blindside block, enforcing a new rule put into the high school game for the 2018 season designed to eliminate forceful blocks delivered outside of a player's field of vision.
Ferge disagreed with the call.
"It was totally clean, side-by-side. I don't know what they called, but they called it and it was a killer because that was a touchdown," he said. "It is what it is. These guys aren't professionals and it's not their only job. They're out here and they're trying to make the game better, but that was a terrible call and it hurt us bad."
Missed opportunity No. 2
The penalty took the touchdown off the board and left the Hodags to start at their own 33 with 4:12 left in the half. Rhinelander marched deep in the Antigo territory and a five-yard run by Hartman gave the Hodags first and goal from the 10, with no timeouts and roughly 20 seconds to go in the half.
Rhinelander opted to run a play instead of spike the ball. Lieder rolled to his right and, with Antigo defenders closing in, decided to make a break for the end zone. He was tackled inbounds at the 3 with roughly 10 seconds remaining and the Hodags were unable to get off another play before time expired.
"We had to get out of bounds, we didn't do it and that hurt us really bad," Ferge said. "That's poor clock management at that point. We've got to understand we've got to get out of bounds in that situation."
The 'I' has it
A Rhinelander offense that struggled to reach the 100-yard plateau a week earlier against Medford, nearly put up 300 yards on the Robins and did so with a different look.
A shotgun spread team for virtually all of Ferge's five-year tenure in Rhinelander, the Hodags came out in an I formation to start the game, and stayed in the set until going back to a shotgun look late in the third quarter.
Ferge called the switch in formation a counter to Antigo's three-deep coverage in the secondary. While the Hodags had much more success stretching the field vertically and horizontally in the game, Ferge said the team still left some plays on the table.
"We liked our mismatches there and I think we could have exposed it a lot more than what we did," he said. "We had some slants running and didn't get the ball out fast enough. We had the advantage the whole way. It's tough. We did make some plays but I felt we could had taken advantage of that and we did not enough, not at all."
Lieder rushed for 49 yards in the game and was 7 of 17 passing for 93 yards with no interceptions. He was shaken up on a run late in the fourth quarter and replaced by sophomore Quinn Lamers, who threw an interception on a deep ball with less than a minute to play.
Hidden yardage
The Hodags were without leading tackler and returner Peyton Erikson due to injury on Friday.
"He's our best safety and we didn't have him the whole game," Ferge said. "He would have made a huge difference in this game, especially with our returns."
Rhinelander was outplayed, from a special teams standpoint, in the contest. Antigo averaged 42.4 yards per punt, 25.7 yards per kick return and 21.5 yards per punt return. Rhinelander averaged 31 yards a punt, 9.6 yards per kick return and did not return a punt on two chances.
Taking away Rhinelander's opening possession, which started at the Antigo 25 following a fumble, the Hodags' average starting field position was its own 24-yard line. Antigo's average starting field position was its own 42.
"I don't think we got past the 30, 25 or 20 any times and our offense is forced to go 80 yards," Ferge said. "Their offense is on the 40. That's not a good trade and we did it a lot this game."
What's next
Rhinelander (1-4, 0-2 Great Northern) hosts Mosinee this coming Friday night at Mike Webster Stadium. The Indians (3-2, 2-1 Great Northern) come in off a 45-27 win over Lakeland in Week 5.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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