Defensive Battle in af2? Albany vs. Cape Fear
Keith Murphy
Saturday August 10, 2002
Cape Fear Head Coach Chris Siegfried says that Albany poses a difficult test for his Wildcats. “Right now, from the stuff I’ve been reading, they’re a confident team and so are we. I just hope that our guys aren’t over-confident because Albany is a very good ball club and they’re very capable of beating us down here. They’ve won some big games on the road. They got Rochester when Rochester was on top of their game and handled them. They pose a different kind of threat than Richmond. Their defense is outstanding and features a very good secondary. They do a lot of different things on offense. With Corey Hill in there you’ve definitely got a big time receiver to think about. They pose a threat to us and we just have to take care of ourselves and minimize big plays, which is something we didn’t do against Richmond.”
Both Albany and Cape Fear are expansion teams who have over-achieved using a similar model. Defense wins games. Ron Selesky’s squad won thirteen regular season games in route to a Northeast Division championship. Even though the Northeast was a division composed entirely of expansion teams, Siegfried says that no one, including the Wildcats, should take the Conquest lightly, “At this point in the season it’s tough to play any team. The toughest thing we face this week is the fact that we beat them during the season. We’re much improved from that time and obviously so are they. After suffering back-to-back losses they’ve been pretty much handing everyone their heads. I expect to see a much better team and I’m sure they are expecting the same from us. It’s going to be a battle. Easy games were over when the season finished. It’s tough to play a team like this because they are very aggressive and minimize what you can do offensively. Defensively you have to be very aggressive because they’ll just pick you apart with the short passes and screens.”
Cape Fear enters this game with a budding star at quarterback in Bobby Pesavento. “We’re lucky to get a quarterback of this talent in here,” says Siegfried, “but I honestly feel we’d be in the same position if I had pulled the trigger on Matt LeFever. They both played great against Charleston. But the experience that you gain from playing at a school like Colorado and playing in front of tens of thousands of fans as opposed to five to eight thousand fans in invaluable. The biggest thing Pesavento brings to the table is poise. He’s out there smiling and having a good time even when the game is in the fourth quarter and tied up. He’s extremely intelligent. At the very least, he’ll be in Arena One next year. He’s a quiet, confident leader and our guys elevate their game around him. I’m sure a lot of people around the league, when they heard Mike Gluski got hurt, thought we were done, but no one in this organization thought we were done. I had to recruit another quarterback regardless of who we had. You can’t go into the playoffs with just one quarterback. My philosophy was ‘I want the best quarterback I can get.’ Bobby’s arguably one of the best in the league.”
E.J. Burt, the AF2’s sack leader, has anchored the powerful line that has led the Wildcats to 14 wins. Siegfried says that his line will be facing their toughest test yet. “You might think we have an advantage on paper, just having E. J. But they’ve played against E. J. once and with the exception of six or seven plays, they did a pretty good job against him. They’ve got a talented defensive line and their starting center and guard are probably the best combination of lineman we’ve faced all year. They have a very well-coached line. The game will definitely be won or lost in the line. Every game that we play is.”
One of Cape Fear’s biggest problems this season has been injuries. “We still have the same motto: ‘Win by any means necessary.’ What’s new for us is that everyone’s healthy now. Even Troy Esprit is healthy.” The Wildcats have seen injuries to such critical players as Matt Burstein, Rico Cannon, and Jeff Higgins. So, for the first time all season, Cape Fear takes the field at full strength.
Kickoff is set for 7:30 pm at the Cumberland County Crown Coliseum. The winner plays the winner of the Macon – Florida matchup in the Conference finals.
Dr. Murphy has nearly 20 years of media experience ranging from radio to the Internet. He has served as webmaster for two AF2 teams and the football team at Fort Valley State University. He is a professor at FVSU and directs www.bunniwerks.org, a non-profit rabbit rescue organization. He has been commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel. Murphy is also serving as a first party editor of af2 stories for ArenaFfan. For more information about Dr. Murphy see: www.keithmurphy.info
