Lions hoping to continue late-season win streak
BREMEN - It’s been a nice stretch run for Bremen’s Lions as they come into round one of sectional action on a fourgame win streak shutting out South Bend Clay a week ago.
“We took care of business and did what we expected to do, but I was really proud of our guys in controlling the controllables and doing what we could do to be effective,” said Bremen coach Jordan Leeper. “There are always little things that we can clean up in our execution. We just want our guys to understand that we still have to play good football and that is what’s important, playing at our level and our ability.”
They will need to play good football this week as Manchester (4-4) has some dangerous weapons.
“They have a lot of athletes and they do a lot of things really well,” said Leeper. “It starts with their running back. Braxton Ream is a really good athlete. He’s been around a few years and he’s rushed for well over 1,000 yards each year that he’s played. He’s tough, he’s big and he’s physical. One of our coaches said he reminds you of Nate Mullen who played for us a couple of years ago.”
If you stop Ream you have to deal with a solid passing game.
“They have the ability to throw the football too,” said Leeper. “They have a receiver with over 800 yards receiving and those are huge numbers in northern Indiana. We don’t play too many teams that have the choice of throwing or running the ball. Manchester has the skilled guys to do it. They’ve shown they are capable of doing it.”
The Squires’ offensive scheme is designed to make a team defend sideline to sideline.
“They run predominately a spread offense with a lot of inside runs,” said Leeper. “They like to throw to (Seth) Gaerte and he seems to have a knack of getting behind people, so when you focus on that, it opens up the inside run.”
Playing Bremen football is the focus of the Lions (6-3).
“The biggest thing is that we have to control the line of scrimmage,” said Leeper. “We feel if we can win the line of scrimmage that sets the tone for us. Defensively, we have to play a clean game doing what we need to do to stop their run game.”