Matt Cavanaugh is a Hartland football player on a mission.
”Going all through HAYAA battles with Brighton, that’s our number one rivalry,” he said going into tonight’s meeting with Brighton. “The last thing I want to do before I end my career is beating Brighton.”
The Eagles came close last year, but a missed extra point was the difference in a 7-6 loss at Brighton. It extended the Bulldogs’ winning streak to seven against the Eagles, eight of 10 overall.
Hartland (1-1 overall, 0-1 KLAA West) will play host to the Bulldogs (2-0, 1-0) tonight in a game broadcast by The Livingston Post at 6:50 p.m. Click here for the link.
Brighton is coming off a systematic dismantling of Salem last week, scoring 30 points in the first quarter en route to a 43-6 win.
“You can’t expect that every game,” Brighton coach Brian Lemons said. “But we want to execute on both sides of the football, take care of the things we need to do, fundamentally, to win games. Our guys have been maturing every week, finishing drives, doing things like that an that has to continue for us to be successful.”
Linebacker Griffin Bell says the Bulldogs w0n’t be resting on their laurels.
‘We had a good game last week, but no offense to Salem, Hartland is better than they are,” he said. ”(Hartland) is a step up. It’s good to build confidence but we shouldn’t be expecting the game outcome as Salem. That’s the goal, right? But it’s going to be very competitive.”
Hartland is coming off a 13-10 loss at Novi last week, one of those coulda-shoulda results that keep coaches awake at night.
“Penalties hurt us last week,” Hartland coach Brian Savage said. ‘We had two touchdowns called back for offensive penalties, we had some silly 15-yard penalties and we put the ball on the ground. We ended up losing by a score. We have to fix that stuff.”
The Eagles will try to do so in front of their home crowd,
‘It’s going to be huge,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s going to be an intimidating factor for us and Brighton, to be sure. It’s going to be electric for us, too, because we’ve got the whole town and all of Livingston County here to see us. It’s going to be awesome.”
A win also will be crucial to Hartland’s hopes at a division title, as a second division loss would make a division title much more difficult to obtain.
Brighton, on the other hand, looks to keep in the title hunt with a victory.
“It’s our first big test,” Bell said. “My sophomore year we went to Hartland but there were no people in the stands, so it will be a much different atmosphere that a lot of kids are going to experience for the first time, going away and playIng a big rival. It’s going to be crazy.”
