Published: November 02, 2009 07:30 am      

MAC's playoff hopes lie with Clinton

10-0 River Kings face Cedar Falls tonight

By Jon Gremmels

Herald Sports Editor

CLINTON — They’ve read the posts on the Internet, or at least they’ve heard about them. Comments that the Mississippi Athletic Conference is weak and the Clinton River Kings would struggle to compete in the Mississippi Valley Conference.

The River Kings don’t buy the arguments.

They passed their first test against an MVC team, beating Cedar Rapids Prairie 42-13 last Wednesday in an Iowa Class 4A football substate game. But if they are going to keep advancing in the playoffs, the third-ranked River Kings (10-0) will have to beat MVC teams the rest of the way because all of the other MAC teams lost to MVC teams that night.

The River Kings don’t plan to get caught up in all the talk. They prefer to let their actions speak for them.

“They talk like, MVC we wouldn’t win a game, but that’s just talk,” Clinton senior linebacker Adam Young said after the win against Prairie. “We came into this game just like the attitude every game. We’re going to come in play our game, do our job, try not to turn the ball over as much and just work at stopping the other team.”

Clinton gets its second chance at a team from the MVC tonight. Cedar Falls (8-2) visits Coan Field for a 7 p.m. game.

Cedar Falls, which beat Prairie 31-7 in the regular season, advanced with a 23-3 substate win against Davenport Assumption last Wednesday. Assumption gave the River Kings their closest game of the year, with Clinton winning 28-21 in overtime.

“We’ve seen them in several games (on film),” Clinton coach Lee Camp said of Cedar Falls. “They have good size, they’re a pretty physical team and they have a sophomore tailback (Barkley Hill) that’s run for 1,600 yards. They do a really nice job of running the ball.”

Camp said the Tigers beat Assumption by dominating both lines.

That should set up a nice matchup since Clinton has done a really nice job of stopping the run, allowing less than 2 yards a carry this season.

Cedar Falls has a returning all-state utility defensive player in senior Jake Farley. Farley, the son of Northern Iowa football coach Mark Farley, also serves as quarterback and has thrown for 950 yards this season.

Heading into its second game against an MVC team, the River Kings have a couple of advantages that they didn’t have before they played Prairie. First, because it was a blowout, they got to rest a lot of players with a short week of practice ahead. Second, they could better judge film of Cedar Falls because they had tape of the Tigers against both Prairie and Assumption.

But, it still going to come down to the play on the field once tonight’s game kicks off.

“It’s the same things we’ve been telling them,” Camp said. “We’ve got to go out and control things we can and not do things to beat ourselves. We have to make sure tackles, play our positions and everybody has to do something in the scheme of our offense and defense.”

He believes if the River Kings take care of themselves, it won’t matter what conference their opponent is from.

Anyway, Camp doesn’t put stock in the talk about one league being better than the other. He said one reason the MVC had an edge in the postseason was because it had 14 teams that play in two divisions, while the 10-team MAC plays a round-robin conference schedule. That means the MVC has an advantage in getting more teams with better records, thus resulting in more home postseason games.

“I don’t put a lot of weight into that,” he said of the one-conference-is-better-than-the-other talk. “Are kids growing up in towns like that better? I think it’s just a bunch of chatter.”

Of course, the River Kings can quiet the chatter with their actions on the field. That’s just what they hope to do.