Medford’s ground game, defense get it done at Rhinelander

MEDFORD 40, RHINELANDER 8

MATT FREY

SPORTS EDITOR

The big play wasn’t quite as common for Medford’s offense as it had been in recent weeks, but the grinding approach was just as effective Friday in a 40-8 win at Rhinelander.

After getting stopped on their opening possession, the Raiders scored touchdowns on five straight possessions to put the game out of reach. Even when an interception stopped a potential sixth straight scoring drive, Evan Paul’s interception on the next play gave Medford the ball right back and Paxton Rothmeier’s 21-yard run, his third touchdown of the night, put the running clock into effect.

“They came out pretty fired up to get after us and they played pretty good defense to start, so we had to work for it a little bit more, especially in the first half,” Medford head coach Ted Wilson said. “They really came out swinging because that’s what people are going to do with us. That’s OK. That’s good for us.”

The win was Medford’s sixth straight overall and put the Raiders at 5-0 in the Great Northern Conference and 6-1 overall heading into Friday’s homecoming battle with Mosinee (5-0, 6-1) that will clinch at least a share of the conference title for the winner.

Offensively the Raiders finished with 367 rushing yards on 53 carries, an average of 6.9 yards per attempt, and added 18 passing yards. A good chunk of Rhinelander’s 185 total yards, including James Heck’s 48-yard touchdown run, came in the fourth quarter well after the game had been decided. Wilson said the defense was solid against Rhinelander’s pistol Wing-T, which employs a lot of motion and fakes hoping to get defenders’ eyes to wander.

“For the most part we did OK,” he said. “We had a couple of blips there. They had this little wraparound draw that they hit on us once. We talked all about how their kid would stop and that’s the only time he ever stops is when they run that. But sometimes you just can’t help yourself. That stuff happens. For the most part, before we put the second team in, they didn’t have very many yards at all. I think they were well under 100 yards of total offense before that.”

One of Medford’s handful of big plays, a 47-yard run by Rothmeier, set up the first touchdown, an 8-yard touchdown from Charlie Gierl on a counter play with 3:18 left in the first quarter. Carson Carbaugh quickly ended Rhinelander’s next possession by intercepting a deep ball and setting Medford up on its 34. A 14-play drive was extended early on by a roughing the punter penalty on the Hodags and the Raiders overcame a holding penalty before finally punching it into the end zone on Rothmeier’s 4-yard run with 8:03 left in the half. Evan Wilkins ran in the two-point try for a 14-0 lead.

A tackle for loss by Max Dietzman and a sack of quarterback Truman Lamers by Logan Kawa quickly ended the next Rhinelander possession and an 8-yard shank on the punt gave Medford a chance to deliver the double knockout of touchdowns at the end of the first half and the start of the second. That’s what the Raiders did.

First, a 38-yard drive included a 10yard pass from Hank Crass to Cameron Bull on fourth and nine and a 7-yard run by Wilkins on fourth and four. That run took the ball to the two and Rothmeier finished the drive there for a 20-0 lead with 53 seconds left.

Medford’s longest offensive play of the game was a 53-yard run by Carbaugh on the first play of the second half and advanced the ball to Rhinelander’s 9. On fourth and goal from the one, Crass pushed over the goal line on a quarterback sneak and a 26-0 lead.

“That’s pretty much a backbreaker for anybody,” Wilson said of the bookend touchdowns. “You’re thinking you’re in the game at 14-0, all of a sudden it’s 20-0 at the very end and it’s 26-0 right away on the other side. Four scores is a lot different than two. That’s where the trend has gone. That’s why people try to defer to try to get those two scores back to back.”

Wilkins scored on another counter play, this one from 13 yards out and Crass hit Bull over the middle in the back of the end zone for the two-point conversion to make it 34-0 with 5:18 left in the third quarter. A juggling, one-handed interception by Rhinelander’s Zach Germain gave the Hodags the ball at their own nine with a minute to go in the quarter, but Paul’s leaping grab of a Lamers pass along the left sideline and his 10-yard return ended any hope Rhinelander had of a comeback.

“That was a great play by Evan Paul,” Wilson said. “First he had very good coverage. Secondly he went up and got the ball and third he had a nice return. A very good job all around by him. He actually covered very well the entire game. I thought the D-backs as a whole did very well in coverage.”

Rothmeier finished with 153 yards on 20 carries to get up to 946 yards and 16 touchdowns for the season. Carbaugh had a season-high 117 yards on 12 carries.

“We made a few adjustments to our blocking scheme a little bit, and that’s where we had a couple of big plays,” Wilson said. “Carbs broke that real big one at the beginning of the third quarter. We made a few adjustments and just had to clean up a little bit of blocking. The kids had to see exactly where they needed to go. Then it started to flow a little better in the third quarter.”