Oct. 27—SALEM, S.D. — The McCook Central/Montrose Fighting Cougars will get another shot at the top team in Class 11B on Thursday.
The Fighting Cougars travel to Elk Point for a quarterfinal playoff matchup against the undefeated Elk Point-Jefferson Huskies at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, with a spot in the semifinals on the line.
The No. 8-seeded Fighting Cougars (6-3) enter the matchup coming off a 41-14 opening-round victory over Chamberlain last week. The No. 1-seeded Huskies (9-0), last season's Class 11B state runners-up, present a formidable challenge as they continue their pursuit of another trip to the DakotaDome.
"They're really good across the board, They're the No. 1 team for a reason," MCM head coach Mike Garry said. "But we've shown that we can hang with teams. Obviously, EPJ beat us in the beginning of the year, but we put ourselves in a position to win that game so we feel really confident."
Thursday's quarterfinal marks a rematch of the teams' season opener Aug. 21 in Salem, where the Huskies escaped with a 28-13 victory in a much closer contest than the final score indicated.
EPJ held a narrow 14-13 lead entering the fourth quarter after a missed extra point kept the Fighting Cougars from tying the game.
McCook Central/Montrose later threatened to take the lead but fumbled inside the 5-yard line. The Huskies capitalized, with Aiden Hammitt breaking free for a 97-yard rushing touchdown before adding another score in the final two minutes to secure the two-score win.
Since that season-opening loss, the Fighting Cougars have won six of their last eight games. Their other losses came against undefeated Clark/Willow Lake, a 30-28 road setback, and Deuel, a narrow 8-7 defeat to start the year at 0-2. All three of their losses this season have come by an average of six points.
"They got lots of great players, and earlier in the season we shot ourselves in the foot," MCM running back Ben Wiebersick said. "We just have to be sound and learn from our own mistakes if we want to have a chance."
Offensively, MCM has found success with a balanced attack. Quarterback Andrew Sabers has thrown for nearly 700 yards, while the rushing trio of Wiebersick, Connor Heiberger and Sabers has combined for more than 1,300 yards and 23 touchdowns.
The Huskies, meanwhile, have continued their dominant run, shutting out Parker/Marion 35-0 in the first round. Their offense relies heavily on the ground game, totaling 3,142 rushing yards compared with 189 passing yards. Elk Point-Jefferson has won its games by an average of 27.1 points.
"They are a power run team, so we like the fact that we got to see that (against Chamberlain) to prepare us for next week's power run game, too, which is huge for us," Garry said. "We have to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. We're going to have to have a little bit of an effective short passing game because we know that their guys are going to be hard to move up front."
With the semifinal round one win away, the Fighting Cougars have an opportunity to avenge their season-opening loss and challenge one of the state's best teams who is hungry after falling just short a season ago.
"We were kind of hoping that we were able to see them again because we felt like we were really close to coming away with a win last time, but those late mistakes killed us," Garry said. "Now we have another second chance at them. It's going to be a fun one."