HOWELL — Fans might have called last week’s 38-0 win over Westland John Glenn a laugher, but the Highlanders football team is treating Thursday’s home game with Canton as anything but a joke.
Howell (1-0) and Canton (0-1) meet in the KLAA West Division opener at John Dukes Field in a game that will be broadcast live on The Livingston Post at 6:50 p.m. Click here for the link.
“They’re the defending KLAA West Division champs,” Howell coach Brian Lewis said. “We’re looking forward to seeing what we’ve got against the champs.”
Canton is coming off a 38-23 loss to Dearborn Fordson at Wayne State University last week. The Chiefs have diversified some from the double tight end Wing T offense they’ve run for years, but Lewis is expecting a challenge for his defense against the run-heavy attack.
“They do what they do, and they’ve got a mentality that they’re going todo what they do,” Lewis said. “They’ve been a team for the last 20, 30 years that has done a really good job of winning games and building a sense of toughness in their team. So we’re looking forward to that challenge.”
Quarterback Nolan Petru says the Highlanders, coming off that lopsided win, will have to increase their effort against the Chiefs.
“The first week, we got the little mistakes out of the way and it didn’t affect the game too much,” he said. “But now we can’t have those little mistakes any more. This week, we’re ready to play the best of the best.”
That old coaching saw about a team’s biggest improvement between weeks 1 and 2? Lewis isn’t totally a believer.
“Whatever you want to take this for, we want to improve every week,” he said. “There are weeks when it looks like a big ump to the outside eye, but to the inside eye, it (might) look like we didn’t jump as much as we wanted to, and vice versa. Some years, it’s between weeks 2 and 3. We’re just looking to get better, and improve and play a cleaner game.”
For Lewis, in his second year at Howell, his players have a better idea of what’s expected.
“That’s a testament to our freshman and JV coaches,” he said. “They bought in and got our freshman and JV guys ready, so once we got those kids up to varsity it wasn’t a total rehash and restart. That’s been nice for us as coaches and refreshing for the kids.”
And that knowledge leads to confidence.
“I think we have a great game plan this week,” Petru said. “If we do what we’re supposed to do and do the plays right and all that stuff, we’ll have a successful game.”
