Eau Claire, Boyceville (WQOW) -- Eau Claire Regis has rolled to a pair of WIAA playoff wins, scoring a total of 100 points in the process, but in Friday night's Level 3 matchup against Boyceville, the Ramblers will face a Bulldogs defense that has yet to allow a point in the postseason.
You can expect a physical, ground oriented game Friday night at Carson Park. Regis head coach Bryant Brenner says Boyceville's defense will be the best his Ramblers have faced all season long.
"They're a real tough, physical opponent," says Brenner, "they present a different type of challenge than Pittsville presented to us, so we're expecting to play a tough, physical battle. They're very similar to us, in the fact that they want to run the ball, they'll pass it when they want to, and then they play tough, physical defense, so this week, we're expecting a low scoring game, it's probably going to be a game determined by who creates opportunities through turnovers, or who turns the ball over the fewest amount of times will win."
Boyceville's been on a roll lately. The Bulldogs got a shutout win in the final game of the regular season just to get into the playoffs. Against Athens last Friday, Boyceville scored a special teams touchdown and a defensive TD, but the Bulldogs know points will be hard to come by Friday night against Regis.
"We gotta come out and control the ball, control the clock a little bit, but we're willing to make adjustments if we need to, " says Boyceville head coach Brian Roemhild, "our defense needs to continue to play well, we need to keep our offense on the field as much as possible. We know we're playing a very good football team. We got to play them last year and got a good look at them, they return a lot of very good football players."
"We got to work together, get something clicking on offense, hold them on defense," says Bulldogs senior wide receiver/defensive back, "they've scored 171 points in the first quarter, their opponents nothing. We've got to come out there swinging."
"Boyceville's probably going to present one of the toughest defenses that we'll have faced all year," says Brenner, "our main thing offensively is that we can't stop ourselves. We can't have penalties and we can't have fumbles. There's probably going to be a lot of third down, fourth down type of situations that we're going to have to convert. Boyceville isn't going to give us anything easy, we're definitely going to have to earn everything that we get against them."
Boyceville hopes to continue its season turnaround with a win over Regis.
"We had a loss early in the year and we had a team meeting after it," Roemhild says, "and the kids decided where we were going to go with this. We knew going into the Elk Mound game that that was really our first playoff game. We had to win that game to advance, and from that point on, our defense has really stepped it up. We kind of switched our offense up a little bit to get more guys in the backfield, and it's been working."
The Division 6 matchup between Boyceville and Regis is set for 7:00 P.M., Friday, at Carson Park in Eau Claire.
Boyceville head coach Brian Roemhild
EC Regis head coach Bryant Brenner
