If there is one thing the Clackamas football team should understand about the playoffs, it’s the importance of taking care of the ball.
If the Cavaliers hadn’t recovered a fumble against South Medford with 1:39 left in last year’s 6A final, they wouldn’t have celebrated their first state title.
So a rash of turnovers in the team’s last two playoff wins has sounded an alarm. The Cavaliers fumbled on three consecutive possessions in the second round against West Salem, and in last week’s quarterfinal against Liberty, they turned over the ball three times and gave up a touchdown on a blocked punt.
“We have high standards,” Clackamas coach Joe Bushman said. “A lot of times we’re stopping ourselves, whether it’s a fumbled snap or a turnover. We’ve been talking a lot that we’ve got to clean that up as we go forward here, because you can’t waste possessions in these big games.”
The second-seeded Cavaliers (12-0) know they can’t afford such miscues at 5 p.m. Friday when they meet No. 3 Sheldon (10-2) in a 6A semifinal at Hillsboro Stadium. During their 26-game winning streak, however, they have repeatedly proven that they will find a way to win.
“The kids, especially the seniors, they have a strong belief in each other,” Bushman said. “They’ve been in these games before, and they have a quiet confidence about them, which is nice.”
The Clackamas defense – led by Oregon State-bound senior lineman Kelsen Hennessy, senior defensive end Justice Pagan and senior linebacker Jake Bushman – is allowing a 6A-low 14.4 points per game.
“They’re the best defense I would say that we’ve faced,” Sheldon coach Josh Line said. “They don’t have a weakness. They’re good at every spot. Usually you can watch film and see a couple people where maybe you have an advantage physically, but we don’t see that there.”
The Cavaliers will be tested by an explosive Sheldon offense that features senior quarterback Michael Johnson Jr. (18 touchdown passes, 15 touchdown runs), senior receiver Patrick Herbert (11 touchdown catches) and senior tailback Matthew Burgess (1,405 rushing yards, 23 touchdowns).
“Their quarterback is dangerous,” Joe Bushman said. “Obviously, we’ll have our hands full with him.”
The Penn State-bound Johnson came out of a second-round win over Sherwood after tweaking his knee but showed no ill effects last week in leading a quarterfinal win over West Linn.
“It was just more precautionary to keep him out of the game,” Line said. “He was healthy enough to play. I don’t know that he had an injury, per se, but it kind of scared him a little bit. He felt a little bit of pain in his knee, but once he got to the sideline, he was good to go.”
Sheldon is bidding to reach the final for the first time since it won the 2012 title. The Irish are coming off a 38-26 quarterfinal win over No. 6 West Linn in which they blew out to a 38-13 halftime lead.
Sheldon has won six in a row since losing to Jesuit 36-32, its only defeat to an Oregon team. In that game, the Irish were unable to hold a 15-point lead in the second half.
“The Jesuit loss was a really tough loss for us,” Line said. “We took it really hard, because we had done almost enough, and it’s hard to swallow that. But we learned from it.
“We have a lot of confidence coming in because we’ve played a lot of good teams. We’ve always been in the fight.”
Clackamas has been splitting time at quarterback with juniors Austin Atkeson and CJ Jordan all season. Atkeson has passed for 1,669 yards and 16 touchdowns and Jordan has thrown for 1,062 yards and 11 scores. Both have five touchdown runs.
“When they’re both playing well, we play both,” Joe Bushman said. “When we feel like one kid has a hot hand over the other, we go with him. It’s worked up to this point.”
Their main target is 6-foot-3 junior Richard Kennewell, who has caught 39 passes for 921 yards and 14 touchdowns. Last week against Liberty, he had seven catches for 168 yards and two touchdowns.
Outside of Kennewell, individual Cavaliers aren’t putting up big numbers.
“It’s not one or two guys we’re trying to feed,” Joe Bushman said. “We’ve got about five or six guys, and we’re trying to spread the ball around. I think it makes it hard to defend us.”
Line, in his second season at Sheldon after coaching at Marshfield, said the Irish expected to make a deep playoff run. He said the team is “very confident and excited, but we know we have a tough challenge” in facing the Cavaliers.
“We’ve got to have a couple things go our way, but we feel like we can play with good teams, and we’ve proved that,” Line said. “We’ll have opportunities. We’ve just got to make sure we capitalize when they come.”
A look at the other 6A semifinal:
No. 4 Jesuit (11-1) vs. No. 1 Lake Oswego (12-0), 12 p.m. Friday, Hillsboro Stadium: A rematch of a nonleague game from Week 2, when the Lakers won at Jesuit 20-14. In that game, Lake Oswego held a 20-0 lead in the fourth quarter before the Crusaders rallied, forcing the Lakers to recover an onside kick with one minute left. Jesuit had a 300-277 edge in total yards, getting 129 rushing yards from Andy Alfieri. … Lake Oswego also beat Jesuit 48-17 in last year’s quarterfinals as Collin Bracken rushed for 146 yards and two touchdowns. … The Lakers are coming off a 35-24 win over Central Catholic in which Casey Filkins ran for 134 yards and three touchdowns and caught a touchdown pass from Jackson Laurent, who completed 16 of 19 passes for 250 yards and two scores. … Laurent has passed for 2,703 yards and 30 touchdowns, including 748 yards and nine scores in the playoffs. Filkins has rushed for a team-high 1,020 yards and 23 touchdowns. … Jesuit rallied from a 12-point, fourth-quarter deficit to beat Tigard 23-22 in the quarterfinals, getting a one-yard quarterback sneak from senior Will Spitznagel with 19 seconds left to take the lead. … The Crusaders have won 10 in a row since losing to Lake Oswego, including a 36-32 win at Sheldon. They average 285.3 rushing yards per game, led by the 6-3, 210-pound Alfieri (1,013 yards, 13 touchdowns). Spitznagel, a third-year starter, has completed 70.8 percent of his passes for 1,922 yards and 28 touchdowns. … Lake Oswego, which lost to South Medford 49-27 in the semifinals last year, has not played in the championship game since back-to-back appearances against Sheldon in 2011 (47-14 win) and 2012 (13-6 loss). Jesuit lost in the quarterfinals the last two years after beating West Linn 21-14 for the 2015 title.
