Published: August 29, 2008 12:11 am         

North, South looking to rebound from opening losses

TERRE HAUTE — It’s probably not fair to add additional importance to tonight’s Terre Haute North-Terre Haute South high school football game at Memorial Stadium.

Bragging rights and Victory Bell possession are enough to assure that players from both sides will be at a fever pitch long before the 7 p.m. kickoff; it’s one week during the season when the coaches might have to calm their players down instead of firing them up.

Asked about his thoughts on South early this week, for example, coach Chris Barrett of North said, “It doesn’t matter what my thoughts are. It’s going to be a heck of a ballgame. It always is.”

But with both teams coming off losses last Friday, albeit road losses to very good opponents, one of the two promising but probably not overly confident teams will be 0-2 within 24 hours — with the rest of the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference schedule looming two weeks away.

Tonight’s winner gets to lead the league alone for a week and share first place for at least two weeks. The MIC is just 4-4 so far, but the four teams that won last week are among the top six in the state poll; Warren Central, considered by some — including the poll voters — to be just the third-best conference team, routed previously second-ranked Merrillville 42-0.

So coming out of tonight’s game with a little positive momentum would be nice for either the Braves or the Patriots.

Barrett was probably a little happier with North’s performance in a 34-21 loss at 14th-ranked Castle than Mark Raetz was with South’s showing in a 42-21 loss at 15th-ranked Bloomington South.

“We played really hard, and we handled adversity well,” Barrett said this week about that game.

“Bloomington South is a good team, but we didn’t play very well,” Raetz said.

South got in a hole by failing to make tackles on a Panther punt return that went for a touchdown and a quarterback run that set up a score — “We had both plays stopped; we just didn’t make the play,” Raetz said — which are among the things the Braves worked on.

“The big thing is to correct the mistakes we made [last] Friday this week in practice,” Raetz noted.

Barrett wasn’t happy with everything the Patriots did either, however, so the theme was similar in practices on the other end of town.

“Technically, we played very poorly, especially on defense and special teams,” the North coach said.

There’s also that adversity that Barrett mentioned. Junior quarterback Chris O’Leary suffered a shoulder separation late in the first half at Castle and won’t be available, so sophomore Chad Holler will get his first varsity start.

Holler had some good moments in the second half last week, particularly considering he hadn’t had a lot of practice repetitions with North’s first team; that lack of practice work won’t be a problem tonight.

“Once he calmed down, he did a very good job,” Barrett agreed. “He’ll be ready to go [tonight]. That situation would catch any sophomore off-guard.”

South will be without one key player too, because sophomore free safety A.J. Buck is sidelined. Senior Michael Nasser will move back to a spot he’s played before, Raetz said, but will have to be replaced at cornerback.

“South is well coached, they have size, and [Bryn] Schwartz is another good athlete at quarterback,” said Barrett.

“I thought [North] looked good at Castle,” Raetz said. “I thought they played hard, they played well with adversity … and they have very talented skill players with a lot of experience.”

Barrett is no doubt hoping that experience comes in handy tonight, because the North coach wasn’t pleased with how his team handled some aspects of last year’s 13-3 South victory.

“Last year we didn’t execute well,” Barrett said. “We didn’t handle the pressure of the game.”