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Show Hungry bvton Hosts Hot Woods Cross loam By KEITH DUNCAN Coach Larry Eldracher of Woods Cross remembers an old Joe Paterno statement . which might have some heavy bearing on his club's confrontation confron-tation with Layton this Friday at 4:00 p.m. "PATERNO THE Penn State mentor, once said to a team of his that there is no such thing as staying the same in football, you either get better or worse," said Eldracher. "Hopefully we will get better bet-ter and riot worse," continued the first year Wildcat coach. The way Woods Cross whipped whip-ped their first two opponents, getting better only seems natural. BUT ON the other side of the field, armed and extremely hungry for their first victory, is Layton who might also fit into the Paterno quote. The Lancers forgot everything every-thing about their 27-0 loss to Bountiful two weeks ago and came back last Friday with at least a hundred-percent better showing against Viewmont. They too are trying to get better bet-ter than to get worse. THE STORY for the "81 season sea-son for both these clubs will continue this Friday in the afternoon game at Layton. It appears that Brad Merrill, ajunior, may have emerged as Layton's No. I quarterback. It may have come about by default de-fault but none the less the Lancer Lan-cer signal caller showed last Friday that he may be capable of leading the offense. MIKE BUNTING was the starting QB at Bountiful and before Kenny Heath suffered a shoulder injury, Merrill ranked rank-ed third from the top. Merrill can pass well when given the time and has enough going to impress Eldracher at Woods Cross. "Merrill is tall and can throw the ball well when he is given some help," said the 'Cat's head coach. ELDRACHER, WHO saw the Lancers play last Friday, admitted that even though the Lancers are small, they execute ex-ecute on offense and arc only going to get better. With the kind of "timed play" option offense Layton uses, the Lancers could eventually even-tually turn their "Big O" into an explosive weapon. Perhaps it depends on coming up with some regulars who week in and week out will become consistent. consis-tent. IF MERRILL is the Coach Gary Hansen's choice at QB then part of the battle has been won. To blend with Merrill will be Alan Gentry and Jeff Roberts in the backfield. Gentry has so far proved he is one of the class runners in the area. His two touchdown runs against Viewmont last week were impressive. He doesn't have the speed of the Vikings' Caputo or the bull-type bull-type running effect of the Braves' Eggett, but somewhere some-where in the middle of all that he emerges. GENTRY AND his teammates team-mates ran the option to near perfection in Alan's nine yard touchdown run against the Vikes. Now add to all of that a Mike Moss at tight end who also played well last week and Layton fans might have something some-thing to get very excited about in future weeks of prep play. THE LANCER defense, despite de-spite the loss to Viewmont, looked much improved over the Bountiful contest. Bunting plays the middle linebacker position with intensity at 5-9, 160. One Layton coach commented, com-mented, "He gets after it and creates happenings." Kevin Gray, Robert Gray, Steve Hone, Dave Glover and Cliff Hillard combined last week to cage up Viewmont's Caputo to 55 total yards. The week before he blitzed Clearfield Clear-field for 161 yards. JEFF MOON was standout in the Layton secondary last week. He recovered a fumble, was impressive on safety blitz' and covered the pass well. Before Be-fore Woods Cross Blair Kent can have a hey day he'll have to contend with standouts like ' Moon. It's a fact that a sophomore ' Woods Cross coach has said that in recent years there have been at least two Wildcat sophomore soph-omore teams that have played with "heart." One has played and moved on, the team with Mark Tate and Co. aboard and the other is the group of seniors making up the team now. THEIR 2-0 record isn't surprising sur-prising at all to them but could be to someone who doesn't know the team. Woods Cross hasn't been know n for its relics in prep football but Eldracher and the '81 crew would like to turn things around. Kent is leading the Wildcat offense with authority. Doyle Hauter at one wide receiver spot and Mike Egan in the backfield are as supporting as ever. HAUTER CAUGHT his share of Kent-thrown passes against Clearfield and Egan electrified the crowd with plenty of fancy running including includ-ing a 57-yard touchdown, mostly off individual effort. Eldracher hasn't backed down from his statements that Matt Harmer and Scott Gros- senbach are the quickest two tackles he has ever coached. Both are about 6-2. 190 and a bunch of power that Layton will have to contend with come Friday afternoon. LINEBACKER 1)01 G Sen-dobry Sen-dobry was in on ninety-percent of the tackles at Clearfield. He is part of the cream of the crop at Woods Cross. Bruce Bishop is another just as good if not far behind Sendobry. Eldracher commented after the Clearfield game, "One of the unsung heroes on this ball club has to be Gene Christen-sen Christen-sen our center on offense and the defensive end. I told him on the bus on the way home that he was my idol." ELDRACHER CALLS Sendobry Sen-dobry the "rock" on defense and said Bishop is also a key man in the victories the 'Cats have tucked away. "Against Clearfield I felt we went there to play. Against Layton this Friday, we are looking for another tough phy-sical phy-sical game, maybe even tougher than last week." said Eldracher. IF THE past is any indication indica-tion to the future then fans can expect a very physical game Friday. Viewmont players, after af-ter their narrow win over Layton, agreed Layton hit much harder than Clearfield. The area the Lancers will have to improve is in the turnover tur-nover department. In two games Layton has coughed up the football deep in their own territory which took them out of the running for a victory. |