Looking At Lincoln’s Playoff Season

: Enterprise- Leader Sports Editor Mark Humphrey recently interviewed Lincoln head football coach Reed Mendoza. This is a transcript of that interview.

WCEL: Coach, you had an excellent season, but you ran into a pretty solid opponent, McGehee, (42-7 loss) in your last playoff game. Lincoln has only been to the Thanksgiving weekend round of playoffs twice in school history so that is a feather in your cap. Can you sum up the season?

Reed Mendoza: We feel like we had a good year. [The Wolves went 7-5 overall and 4-2 in conference]. Of course, you always wish you could have done a little bit better but overall I think we have a lot to be proud of especially the boys winning the third playoff game in school history is a big accomplishment and really saw us continue to get better throughout the year. I think that’s the mark of a good team, but more than anything it’s a good group of young men and they’re a pleasure to coach.

WCEL: Your defense played fairly well against McGehee because 21 of those points aren’t charged to your defense and they had outscored their opponents in the regular season, 346-57, before that game so defensively your guys were pretty solid even though the final score doesn’t look like it.

Reed Mendoza: First possession of the game actually, we snapped the ball into the end zone 15-to-20 yards past the line of scrimmage. They recover it for a touchdown and then they return a punt for a touchdown and then later on they had a ‘pick six.’ We just didn’t do anything to help our defense all night which was super frustrating because we’d been playing so well offensively.

We can sit and make excuses about the [muddy] field, about the weather conditions and this and that, but the bottom line is we didn’t execute. That’s a tough pill to swallow because we had been playing so well. But, that’s how it goes at times and when you get to that point in the year you’re not going to be able to overcome those type of mistakes and expect to win.

WCEL: When you get to a muddy field like that it makes you really thankful for the facilities Lincoln has with the turf.

Reed Mendoza: Absolutely, really does, I can’t be thankful enough for all of our facilities really. Our locker room and our field and even not referring to football, but our gym and our baseball field is really nice, too, so that makes you thankful and grateful.

WCEL: You did all this with Levi Wright, a converted lineman a few years ago, then he became a tight end, then all of a sudden you played him at quarterback. That’s a pretty good accomplishment for you to make a run in the playoffs with that kid just learning the quarterback position still.

Reed Mendoza: Yeah, again, hindsight is 20/20, but you look at a kid like Levi Wright and wonder what he might have been able to accomplish with three years of experience [playing quarterback]. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case, but all things considered he did a great job along with the rest of the team.

WCEL: Thank you, Coach, Merry Christmas.