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Valley will look to shake off mistakes against winless Knox; Caston seeks first 4-0 start since 1974, but can they slow Panther offense?; Culver seeks another Hoosier North road win at Winamac; NM heads to No. 3 N. Judson
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Rochester (2-1) at Clinton Prairie (3-0), 7 p.m.
In baseball, a gopher ball is slang for giving up a home run. In Indiana high school football, a gopher ball is slang for giving up nothing.
Specifically, that would be the Clinton Prairie defense, who has already equaled their win total from 2025 and who has recorded back-to-back shutouts in their last two games. Frankfort had just 66 yards of offense in a 21-0 loss two weeks ago, and Clinton Central had 158 yards last week in a 27-0 loss.
And the ball simply does not move through the air against Clinton Prairie. In those two shutouts, they allowed a grand total of six yards passing.
Can they get the same kind of resistance against a Rochester wing-T attack that bulldozed Whitko for 414 yards in a 46-6 win last week? The Zebras got those yards and points even though the starters did not play in the second half and even though Rochester never touched the ball in the third quarter.
“You want to look good against those teams, right?” Rochester coach Isaac Shaffer said of Southwood and Whitko, who are a combined 0-6, including 0-2 against the Zebras. “And our guys are. Our paths on blocking look really good. Our speed that we’re firing off the ball looks pretty good. Again, it’s a different speed when you’re playing, like, a (Tippecanoe) Valley. So we haven’t really had that much, and we’re looking forward to this week because we think we’re going to get that, so that will be a true test of how far we’ve really come.”
Shaffer said Clinton Prairie excels in getting multiple players flying to the ball.
“They’re probably preaching the same things we are,” Shaffer said. “We preach 11 guys to the football. You can see it in their film. There’s a reason they only allow 4.3 points per game. They get to the football, so if they break a tackle from one guy, there are about five guys there in a hurry to help out. Very impressive just how hard they play on that defensive side.”
Offensively, the Gophers rely on the senior duo of quarterback Gaige Kuzmicz and Alex King, a one-time wide receiver who has been converted into a workhorse fullback. Shaffer said they need to gang-tackle King.
“They’re going to run kind of what we would call down option or belly option,” Shaffer said. “So they run a lot of belly out of their wing-T formations. So off that, they’ll actually have the quarterback pull the ball and try and get your linebackers sucked in and pull it and take it around the outside.
“He can sling the football. He has a receiver (Trenden) Kaser … a really good, athletic wide receiver. He’s good at going up and getting the football. I would compare him to what we had with (2025 grad) Drew Bowers. Not a very big kid, but he just has good control of his body and can go up and get the football. So they’ll throw the ball up to him quite a bit, but the quarterback can use his legs to make plays that way too.”
Add in halfbacks Jackson Price and Ryder Mitchell to Kuzmicz, King and Taylor, and Clinton Prairie has multiple weapons.
“It’s going to be a physical game,” Shaffer said. “We’ve got to be very physical defensively.”
Tippecanoe Valley (2-1, 0-0 Indiana Northern State Conference) at Knox (0-3, 0-0), 7:30 p.m. Eastern
Class 3A, No. 15 Valley and Class 3A, No. 5 Adams Central were tied 6-6 in the third quarter at Smith-Bibler Memorial Stadium: Home of Death Valley Football Friday, but a lost fumble at their own 14 that led to one Adams Central touchdown, and a turnover on downs when Valley failed a fake punt attempt on their own 24 led to another.
Suddenly, Valley was behind 19-6, and Adams Central pulled away in the fourth quarter to win 33-12. Valley lost three fumbles in the second half.
“We gave them the ball inside the 20 three different times in the second half and made it a short field for them, and the one time we fumbled into the end zone, and that counts as one of the three,” Valley coach Stephen Moriarty said. “So we just couldn’t spot them 18 points like that and a team like Adams Central that does not make many mistakes.”
Having said that, Valley did pass for 171 yards against Adams Central. That included 128 yards from quarterback Hunter Randall and a 43-yard touchdown pass from Hunter Paxton to Owen Omondi.
“I think it was definitely a step in the right direction,” Moriarty said. “I feel that our pass protection was good. Good, clean routes. And I thought Hunter made a lot of good decisions when he was in the pocket.”
Valley now will visit a Knox team that did not lose until the semistate last year but who is winless so far this season. Their losses are to North Judson, Pioneer and Culver Academy, who are a combined 7-2.
The reason for their success was senior Myles McLaughlin, who won Mr. Football with an incomprehensible 4,846 yards rushing and 71 touchdowns and who is now playing at Murray State.
Senior Ashton Walker has taken over at quarterback for coach Russ Radtke, who is in his seventh season at Knox and his 50th in his head coaching career, which also includes stops at North Judson, Connersville, Griffith and New Prairie.
They will run an offense that Moriarty described as an “offense in a phone booth” with pulling guards and foot-to-foot splits between offensive linemen.
“Pretty much the same offense that coach Radtke has run for a long time,” Moriarty said. “They don’t have the McLaughlin kid, but still, they move the ball very well. Their offensive line has a lot of returners. They still have that core there, just not the All-State running back.”
Moriarty said Garrett Hart will miss his second straight game due to ankle and foot injuries.
Pioneer (3-0, 1-0 Hoosier North) at Caston (3-0, 1-0), 7 p.m.
Once again, a Pioneer victory turned into a showcase for their speedsters capable of big plays. Shiloh Rine ran for 96 yards and three touchdowns and also had 108 yards receiving and a touchdown in a 50-7 win over Winamac at the Panther Pit.
That included a 92-yard touchdown pass from freshman quarterback Colton Popejoy.
Phillip McFatridge added 112 yards of total offense, and Braxton Maciejewski had a 34-yard run. Pioneer averaged 10.5 yards per run and nearly 43 yards per passing attempt.
“Really, I thought our guys played just as well as the first two weeks,” Pioneer coach Adam Berry said. “We just had a couple more explosive plays early on to really give us that quick momentum, and our defense did a great job of getting off the field, and we were able to hit a couple more explosive plays. So I’d say the more explosive plays was the difference, but credit to all three phases. I thought we played a heck of a game.”
As for Caston, they relied on a 20-point flurry late in the second quarter to build a 28-8 halftime lead, and they went on to win 28-14.
Logan Mollenkopf has returned to quarterback to replace his graduated brother Gavin. Logan Mollenkopf had been a quarterback at the younger levels but converted to wide receiver as a freshman and sophomore.
“He played quarterback all the way through, so he was kind of the quarterback of that group, and Gavin was the quarterback of the older group when they were in youth league,” Caston coach Chris Ulerick said. “It’s not like he hasn’t done quarterback stuff. He just hasn’t done quarterback stuff for the last couple years. When we do our offseason workouts, we were always working him in and making sure that he wasn’t completely clueless when it came back to being his time. He’s there now. He understands, and he picks up things, and he’s a really good athlete.”
Caston had lost their previous two meetings against North Miami by a combined score of 70-27, but now they will try to overcome the mother of all trends: Caston has lost 36 consecutive meetings against Pioneer – including both the 2024 and 2025 sectionals – and has not beaten them since 1996.
The win over North Miami gave them their first 3-0 start since 2009. Now they are trying for their first 4-0 start since 1974.
Caston has amassed 831 yards rushing as a team in three games without having any individual backs gain 100 for a game.
“Their fullbacks are big guys who can move,” Berry said of London Herd and Tucker Woolever. “It’s going to take us stopping them early and getting multiple hats to them because they are very hard to stop in the open field and even harder to bring down at the line of scrimmage. They’re just powerful runners. And then they utilize their wings as well. They’re just constantly rotating guys in there and keeping guys fresh. That’s key, being able to keep guys fresh. Because they’re very similar to us. They’ve got guys going both ways, so anytime they can get their runners a little bit of a break, they do so, and then they have the next guy that can be just as effective.”
Meanwhile, the Caston defense will have to keep players like Rine and McFatridge from turning the game into a track meet. Ulerick noted that the teams go to the same wing-T camp at Trine University during the summer and that there are few secrets between the teams.
“They are super quick, super fast,” Ulerick said. “It’s going to be two contrasting styles. That’s for certain. We appear to be the more physical team on film, and they are certainly quick. They are going to be a problem to handle just because they’re quick, and they will get after it defensively.”
Culver (1-2, 1-0 Hoosier North) at Winamac (2-1, 0-1), 7 p.m.
Culver’s Brayen Bush and John Carr both ran for over 100 yards in a 34-0 win last week against Triton, and now they will be facing a Winamac defense that allowed 434 yards of offense in a 50-7 loss to Pioneer last week.
Culver has not beaten Winamac since 2022. Culver has also not won back-to-back games since 2022.
Sophomore Preston Freet led Winamac with 45 yards rushing in the loss to Pioneer.
Winamac has not started a season 3-1 or better since 2021.
North Miami (1-2, 0-1 Hoosier North) at North Judson (3-0, 1-0), 7:30 p.m.
North Miami allowed 259 yards rushing to Caston last week, and now they will take on a North Judson team that has rushed for 910 yards in wins over Knox, LaVille and South Central (Union Mills).
North Miami is 0-2 against North Judson since the schools became Hoosier North rivals in 2024. North Miami has never beaten North Judson in football.
North Miami sophomore fullback Oliver Wildermuth had 76 yards on nine carries against Caston, and he is averaging 7.7 yards per carry on his young varsity career.
North Judson is 1-2 in their last three home games dating back to last year.
