Big games for all as football’s regular season comes to an end
The schedule makers in each of the three local football conferences apparently knew what they were doing as the Medford Raiders, Gilman Pirates and Rib Lake Redmen all will play very meaningful games in their regular-season finales Friday night.
The Raiders know they’re in the WIAA post-season tournament and have earned a share of the Great Northern Conference title, Gilman will be in the tournament with a win and would earn a share of the North Central East Conference title and Rib Lake still mathematically has a chance to share the Northwoods East Conference title, though it would take a significant upset, and hasn’t been ruled out of an eight-player post-season berth yet.
Medford at Mosinee
The Mosinee Indians are the three-time defending GNC champions, but Medford has its chance Friday to dethrone them and regain possession of the traveling Cheese Grater trophy in a 7 p.m. kickoff at Mosinee’s Veterans Park.
The Raiders, ranked sixth in Division 3 in this week’s WisSports.net state coaches poll, are 6-0 in league play and 7-1 overall. They haven’t been challenged in conference play since a 33-18 nonconference loss to Onalaska in week two. Mosinee had its 19-game GNC win streak snapped in a 23-22 upset loss at Wausau East on Sept. 20, but the Indians, at 5-1, 6-2, still can force a tie atop the standings with a win Friday.
“This will be, far and away, the best team we’ve seen since week two,” Medford head coach Ted Wilson said. “They’re a good program. They’re well-coached. They have really good athletes again this year. Treve Stoffel is a good quarterback. They probably have the best wide receiver in the conference with Brady Lokken. They’re three-time defending conference champions. They had a 19-game conference winning streak. I guarantee they’re going to have a lot of pride there and going to really come out swinging.”
While Mosinee has cycled through some impressive athletic talent over the last couple of years, the Indians still have three of the conference’s top players that they’ve built the 2024 team around.
Senior Brady Lokken has 35 pass receptions for 742 yards and eight touchdowns, per WisSports.net statistics. Junior Treve Stoffel, the son of head coach Todd Stoffel and younger brother of former Mosinee standout athlete Davin Stoffel, is the team’s quarterback and has completed 60.4% of his 169 pass attempts for 1,625 yards and 15 touchdowns with just five interceptions. He’s also run for 521 yards and six touchdowns.
Senior Jackson Lindell, listed at 6-3 and 260 pounds, was a first-team All-GNC pick on both the offensive and defensive lines last fall and was a unanimous pick on offense as a sophomore. He is a disruptive force Medford’s offensive line will have to control.
Offensively, Mosinee averages 202 pass yards per game and 116 rushing yards. Medford has one of its strongest defensive backfields in recent years. This will be the best pass attack it’s faced since Onalaska.
“They’re very similar (to past years),” Wilson said of the Indians’ offense. “They’re still running a lot of spread. They’re still running a little bit of the option game out of the spread, out of a pistol set. But mostly it’s four wide receivers, one running back. They’re going to try to single up Lokken by himself and get him some catches. He’s a big strong kid. He breaks a lot of tackles. He runs pretty good underneath routes. He’s hard to bring down. The running game kind of runs through Treve. Not to say that they’re not handing it off a bunch too, but if Treve has a good game running the ball, they run the ball very successfully as a team.”
Medford, of course, will try to establish its running game, led by senior Paxton Rothmeier. With 311 yards last week in a 43-13 win over Rhinelander, Rothmeier is now the state’s leading rusher for the season with 1,785 yards and 24 touchdowns. Evan Wilkins has his best game of the year last Thursday with 107 yards on just seven carries and two scores.
Medford averages 295 rushing yards per game. Mosinee allows 140.
“Because they have better athletes than what we’ve seen for the last few weeks I think they’ll obviously have a little bit better run defense,” Wilson said. “It will be inherent on us to make sure we need to do an even better job of stepping with the correct foot, blocking with the correct shoulder, getting bodies where they’re supposed to be and staying on blocks. Usually the thing good defenses do is they shed blocks well. They get off blocks and make tackles. Our goal will be to stay on those blocks longer and make them work more to get off the ball.”
Gilman at Owen-Withee
In what’s probably the premier eightplayer game in the state this week, the sixth-ranked Gilman Pirates (5-1, 6-1) visit top-ranked and unbeaten Owen-Withee (6-0, 7-0) to determine if the North Central East title is shared or goes entirely to the Blackhawks.
The third-place team in last year’s Central Wisconsin East Conference behind Gilman and Thorp, Owen-Withee scored 57 points in its opener against Prairie Farm and basically hasn’t been stopped since, averaging 61 points per game. The Blackhawks have allowed just 49 points all season and those came in just two games, a 58-27 win over then top-ranked McDonell Central on Sept. 13 and a 36-22 win this past Friday over then ninthranked Clayton.
For Owen-Withee, it’s always been about power running under head coach Terry Laube and this year is no different. The Blackhawks found a game-changer in that department this year with the addition of senior Mason Gay, formerly a cross country runner, who has 1,060 yards and 22 touchdowns while averaging 14.3 yards per carry. Sully Poehler has added 505 yards and 10 touchdowns while averaging 7.0 yards per carry.
“They’re very good with their running game,” Gilman head coach Robin Rosemeyer said. “I think they’ve only thrown the ball six times this year and they’ve completed five of them. Their pass game is kind of a play-action all or nothing kind of deal. Mason Gay will be what we need to watch for them as far as their big play maker. He’s a senior playing football for the first year but he has the potential to be the eight-man Player of the Year for the offense with the yards he’s put up. He’s really fast and he has good instincts for playing for the first time.”
Much like Gilman, Owen-Withee’s success can also be contributed to outstanding defense and special teams, which allows it to play much of the game on its opponents’ side of the field.
“They’re going to have some size on the defensive line and their linebackers are physical,” Rosemeyer said. “They attack well, they step up on run plays. Hopefully we can expose that a little bit with some play action. Their line is big, they’re not overly fast but they do have fast kids on the back end with their linebackers and safeties.
“Against teams like Lake Holcombe and Cornell you can rely on the big plays. You can’t do that here,” Rosemeyer added. “It’s going to be a grind-it-out, ball control kind of game. We have to execute and hope for the big play, but we have to be ready to grind it out with eight- to 10-play drives and not make those mistakes that cost you with penalties and turnovers.”
Gilman’s playoff situation is uncertain if it would lose this game as a wealth of zero-loss and one-loss teams could fill the 16-team playoff field, which is determined by overall winning record. A win almost certainly will get Gilman in.
Rib Lake at Hurley
Rib Lake visits Hurley for a 7:30 p.m. game Friday that will determine at least second place in the Northwoods East Conference. Both teams enter at 5-1 in league play, while Hurley is 6-1 overall and Rib Lake is 5-2. The winner would share the conference title with Phillips if the Loggers were to somehow trip up at the Chequamegon Co-op Saturday. It’s not likely to happen, but you never know.
The Northstars are another team that has always relied on a powerful running game. That hasn’t changed in their first year of eight-player football. They are led by Devin Soltis, a 5-11, 170-pound senior who has rushed for 1,020 yards and 15 touchdowns.
But Rib Lake head coach Jonah Campbell said this year’s film shows the Northstars using the passing game a little more. Jack Rowe completes 53% of them with Wyatt Hall being his main threat with 16 catches for 384 yards, a 24-yard average, and six touchdown receptions.
Hurley is coming off a 48-32 loss at Phillips this past Friday in what could be viewed as the conference championship game. They lost to the Loggers similarly to how Rib Lake did in that a couple of empty possessions kept them in chase mode against the Loggers’ offensive machine. Soltis had four touchdowns, but Phillips kept him in check, allowing 79 yards on 20 carries.
Hurley, like Rib Lake last Thursday, also had a tough game with winless Athens this year, escaping with a 12-6 win on Sept. 20.
“They run pretty much that same style where they’re going to run blast, they’re going to run power, they’re going to run counter,” Campbell said. “They’re going to run their three or four plays they’re going to run out of their power sets. But they’ve done a little bit more spreading the ball out too. When they want to pass they go to a four-receiver set and they go to twins on each side and then trips on one side. That’s something we haven’t seen out of a typical Hurley team in the past.”
The playoff scenarios for both teams are sketchy. Going into the final week of regular-season play, there are 17 no-loss or one-loss eight-player football teams eligible to be in the 16-team playoff bracket, including Hurley. Rib Lake, obviously needs some of those teams to lose, and a win over the Northstars would bode well in the tiebreaking process. But how many two-loss teams get in is certainly up in the air.
“It is an interesting situation to be in,” Campbell said. “We’re not sitting at .500 itself, we’ll be above .500 no matter what happens at Hurley. It’s a season that feels like a playoff season but it isn’t necessarily a playoff season in eight-man.
“The message this week is control what we can control,” he added. “We need to win the game to give ourselves a shot. If we lose the game, we’re in a very tough situation because of the way the tiebreakers are going to happen.”
