Loggers put up a fight, but Pirates still win comfortably

GILMAN 42, PHILLIPS 6

It took six games, but the Gilman Pirates finally got their first real test of the 2021 eight-player football season in Friday’s homecoming matchup with Phillips and while they’ll admit they didn’t get a perfect score, they did more than enough to pass in a 42-6 win.

Phillips showed some big-play ability and held Gilman to a season-low 22 points in the first half, but the Loggers still weren’t quite physical enough to slow down the Pirates’ ground game, which accounted for 381 yards and five touchdowns, or keep Gilman’s front seven on defense from disrupting the majority of plays the Loggers wanted to run.

“This is exactly what we needed,” senior Bryson Keepers said after he was involved in 12 tackles and caught four passes for 100 yards and a score. “It was a little kick in the pants, even though we still won the game by quite a bit.”

“It was bad, but I was happy that we scored eight points in the first quarter,” senior quarterback Julian Krizan said after his monster outing that included 210 rushing yards on just 15 attempts and four touchdowns. “I was happy with that, but at the same time it was like, it has to turn over to where we’re going to actually have to play some football now.”

“They really matched us speedwise,” Gilman head coach Robin Rosemeyer said. “They were physical enough too. They pursued well so they made execution for us a little more difficult than what we’ve had in the past. That showed when we turned the ball over twice in their red zone and got in there one other time and didn’t score. They made us need to play better. With a team like that, when you don’t finish, you get concerned because you know that they have the potential to score on the other end and keep it a game.

“I thought they had a good plan,” Rosemeyer added. “They read our guards well and they flowed hard to the ball. Overall, even though we scored 42, I thought they defended us well. We didn’t have a lot of openings or running gaps.”

The Pirates, who remain the state’s top-ranked eight-man team this week, improved to 6-0 overall and 3-0 in the Central Wisconsin West Conference with two regular-season games remaining. Phillips fell to 2-1, 4-2. Gilman kept pace with conference rival McDonell Central, who is also 3-0, 6-0 and looms as the Pirates’ final regular-season opponent on Oct. 15.

The Loggers came into Friday’s game on an offensive roll, having scored 132 points in the previous two weeks and they threw some wrinkles into their offensive game plan, but Rosemeyer said the Pirates aptly made their reads and adjustments –– even though the Loggers lined up and snapped the ball quickly out of their huddles –– and bottled up Phillips’ top threats, Will Knaack (17 carries for minus-7 yards), Jesse Bruhn (15 carries for 39 yards) and James Bruhn (six carries for 25 yards).

“It was a lot of counter plays coming back and just a lot of backfield motion where they’re reading off us on the ends,” Krizan said of Phillips’ offense. Krizan had 12 tackles and Grady Kroeplin had 13 from their linebacker positions.

“We had to stay at home backside watching for the bootleg coming back,” Keepers said. “Then it was just about rallying to the ball really.”

“We did very well with the run game I thought,” Krizan said. “We got burned in the pass game a little bit. We did.”

“Our defensive ends had to make quick reads,” Rosemeyer said. “They would pull the guard and tight end on their counter plays. The defensive ends needed to chase down their pulling tight end. They were able to follow and get in their pocket pretty good and then close it off on the inside and force things wider than where they wanted to go. We got them to play lateral. Bryson Keepers was able to chase it down from the backside and Zack Marion on the frontside was able to keep things solid in the middle and force them to bounce it out at times.”

After Gilman’s defense forced a quick three-and-out, Krizan got the scoring started with a 71-yard touchdown run on the Pirates’ third offensive play. He initially rolled to his left, cut back up the middle and cleared a couple of arm tackles, busted up the right sideline and broke one last tackle with a spin move just inside the 30-yard line.

“I broke through, then I broke an arm tackle,” Krizan said. “I was running down and I was like I’m either going to run out of bounds here or I’m going to stiff-arm the kid and keep going. I stiffarmed him, then I thought I’m going to go out now. Then it felt like the next guy was a deer in the headlights in front of me, so I hit him with the spin move and I was gone from there.”

“It was probably third and six,” Rosemeyer said. “If the first guy makes the tackle, we don’t even get a first down and we’re probably punting the ball. But he breaks a couple of tackles and turns it into a touchdown. That was big.”

Keepers sacked Knaack and forced a fumble that Marion, the homecoming king, recovered at the Loggers’ 44, but Phillips got a stop on downs at the 11yard line. The Loggers then drove past midfield before punting. The Pirates then opened the second quarter with a 72-yard scoring drive that included a 42yard rollout to the right for Krizan. His 1-yard sneak made it 16-0 with 8:33 left in the half.

The Loggers, though, responded quickly, turning a 44-yard completion from Knaack to James Bruhn into a 3-yard scoring toss from Knaack to Jesse Bruhn that cut the lead to 16-6 with 3:29 left in the half.

A 32-yard pass from Krizan to Keepers that included a fumble that bounced right back into Keepers’ hands set up Krizan’s second 1-yard TD sneak of the quarter with 1:42 left.

The Pirates pulled away with two third-quarter scores. The first came on another big run by Krizan, this one from 28 yards out that capped a 57-yard, seven-play drive and made it 28-6. The Pirates got a fourth-down stop on their own 48 and on the next play, no one covered Keepers on a play-action fake and he caught one of the easiest 52-yard touchdowns you’ll ever see. Branden Ustianowski caught the two-point pass on a nice corner route and throw to make it 36-6 with 5:36 left in the quarter.

The Pirates turned the ball over twice, but finally put the running clock into effect with 7:04 left with a short 35yard scoring drive capped by Kroeplin’s 1-yard score.

Phillips finished with 57 rushing yards on 38 attempts and 132 total yards.

“It’s assignments,” Keepers said. “We all find our gaps, and do our job. If the guy is there, we’re going to tackle him or the other guy is going to tackle him.”

“It’s kind of weird but we don’t tackle live,” Krizan said. “We don’t. Four years of high school football I’ve never practiced live tackling. We just wrap up a lot. We flow hard. So if one misses, we have three more to back him up. That’s a big deal.”

Gilman looks to keep rolling this Friday when it visits Alma Center Lincoln, a young team that is driven by its shortpassing game directed by freshman quarterback Jace Paul. It also will be a rare occasion where the Pirates will play on an 80-yard field.

“We have to change gears a little bit, going from facing all run to all pass,” Rosemeyer said. “It’s a short, quick passing game. A lot of spread. They’ll run the ball a little bit but not a lot. We got a lot of pressure on the quarterback last year with our d-line. We need to do that again. They’ll have their quarterback in the shotgun and he wants to get rid of it right away. We have to be able to play tight on the line but not give them anything deep at the same time. We need to be able to tackle. They want to throw the 3-yarder. We still have to make the tackle at 3 yards and make sure we’re disrupting their pass routes and things like that.”