RISON - After surviving the 30 pass attempts by Dumas quarterback Joseph Jones last Friday night in their season opener, head coach Clay Totty says the Rison Wildcats can probably expect more of the same this week when they go on the road again to face the Bis‐marck Lions of the 4-3A Confer‐ence. Kickoff time Friday night is set for 7 o'clock, and fans are being reminded to carry lawn chairs due to recent storm dam‐age at the Bismarck field.
Totty was pleased with his team's performance in their 31-12 victory at Class 4A Du‐mas, but with that game now in the rearview mirror, he empha‐sizes that there can be no let‐down this week, particularly on defense, when the 'Cats go up against Bismarck's talented quarterback, Ian Smith, and his stable of good skill players.
In their season opener last week against top-ranked Prescott, a 47-28 setback, Smith completed 11 out of 23 passes for 201 yards, with 4 touch‐downs and 2 interceptions.
'He (Smith) is really good,' Totty said Monday. 'He will present us some problems, be‐cause he can run and throw. And he has good receivers, good skill players. It will be another test for our defense. We have a lot of youth back there (secondary), but I thought they did a good job (against Dumas).'
In their game against Prescott, the Lions racked up over 300 yards on offense. Rison's de‐fense yielded over 230 yards against Dumas, almost all through the air, when the Bob‐cats abandoned any form of a run game. Totty pointed out that Bismarck, coached by Daniel Keithley, will give the Wildcats problems with a more efficient offense (run and pass) than the Bobcats.
The Lions are coming off a 7-5 season in 2021, and returned practically all of their offense. Bismarck and Rison are similar in the fact that both squads were eliminated in the second round of last year's playoffs by teams that reached the title game Prescott and Harding Academy.
Totty said this week ...