ALTON – No doubt Marquette's 51-20 loss to Civic Memorial last week wasn't the best way for the Darrell Angelton era to begin for the Explorers.
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But this week's opponent, Quincy Notre Dame, had a similar encounter in their opener against Rockford Lutheran, the Raiders getting bounced around in a 62-7 loss.
The loss knocked QND out of the state Class 4A poll, but Angelton thinks the Raiders are a much better team than what they showed last week.
“Quincy Notre Dame runs the same kind of offense and defense that we run,” Angleton said. “They execute what they do very well and they have a coach (Bill Connell) that's been there quite a long time. They like run, run and run some more and we're going to have to stop that if we want to be successful.”
The Explorers were missing two of their five senior players in last week's loss to the Eagles; they think they'll get one of them, Brock Terry, back for this week's game.
“We have a number of guys who go both ways for us,” Angleton said, “and when you lose a player like that, it's like you're losing two players. We've got some really well-conditioned kids, but it's hard when you have a number of players who go both ways.”
Angleton believes the Explorers do match up well with the Raiders and said despite the loss to CM, things have been positive this week in practice. “We've had some really good practices this week,” Angleton said. “We've focused on the things we've done right and fixing what we didn't do well. We think this is going to be a really good ball game for both teams.”
