One year ago Lawton High and Edmond Santa Fe met in one of the wildest football games in recent memory, a 40-36 victory by the Wolves that gained them a district title.
The headlines from that game were injuries to key Wolverines and big plays by Santa Fe's Justice Hansen and Tevin Smith and ironically, heading into tonight's rematch at 7 p.m. meeting tonight at Central Oklahoma's Wantland Stadium, those are the same things that are being discussed once again.
The returning Wolverines who witnessed Santa Fe's comeback from 12 points down in the final nine minutes, well remember all the mistakes that hurt the LHS cause: a costly fumble, penalties and bad tackling. Since then the LHS defense has worked especially hard to try and improve its tackling and the stats are showing they've done just that.
LHS is allowing just over nine points per game, while averaging 37. That tough defense kept the Wolverines in their game with Southmoore last week until the very end, however, once again the offense struggled at times.
The player who most hurt the Wolverines last year was Hansen, the lanky quarterback who rushed for 32 yards and passed for 215 more. He's continued that balance this season, in fact he's ranked among the state's leading rushers in Class 6A with 415 yards on 73 carries, an average of more than five yards per carry.
While LHS has two runners with higher yardage totals Dejuan Wojciechowski (611 yards) and Ivan Thomas (441 yards) Hansen seems to get his on key plays, especially third down where he's a dangerous threat on the quarterback draw.
His passing, though, has become the big weapon with 1,370 yards on just 91 completions, an average of more than 15 yards per completion. He's thrown 15 touchdowns against just four interceptions.
Wednesday May 22nd, 2013 • 2:20:14pm
