Riptide Go for Two in a Row
Keith Antigiovanni
Thursday April 18, 2002
“The guys understand that last week is over, they celebrated a little after the Fresno game but now we have to put it behind us. We’ll have to play our best to beat a strong team like Tulsa,” Riptide Head Coach Cree Morris said.
The Tulsa game represents not only the Riptide’s first non-division opponent but also the first time they will be facing a non-expansion franchise. The Talons are coming off a 13-3 season and have posted a combined record 22-10 the previous two seasons. “San Diego has played awfully well especially since they are an expansion team. Cree (Morris) has done a good job putting together a team with a lot of guys who had no experience,” Talons Head Coach Skip Foster said.
After an impressive 55-42 victory over Birmingham in week one, Tulsa suffered an embarrassing 27-14 defeat to Bossier City. “We just had a complete breakdown in passing, catching, blocking and we put the ball on the ground too many times,” Foster said. Against Bossier City last week Tulsa led 14-6 in the fourth quarter until the scored 21 unanswered points.
In week one, Riptide offensive specialist Marty Graham scored four touchdowns but the Riptide failed to spread the ball around as much they had liked. Versus Fresno Graham had only one touchdown but San Diego’s offense was able to distribute the ball to a variety of receivers and fullbacks as eight different Riptide players scored touchdowns. “The performance of their offensive specialist (Graham) speaks for itself. He’s a gamebreaker and a deep threat. It’s going to be a challenge to stop him. Their quarterback (Kane Claunch) understands how to play in this game. Overall they do a great job of mixing up their offense and executing gadget plays,” Foster said. Graham currently leads in the af2 after three weeks with 656 all-purpose yards while Claunch is tied for most touchdown passes.
Morris feels the keys to the game for the Riptide will be eliminating turnovers and playing better technique on defense. “We can’t give them any breaks. Usually we turn the ball over later in the game when we get relaxed. You just can’t do that in this game because one play could turn the game around. On defense at times we’ve broken down fundamentally which allowed big plays for the other team. We’ve been working all week on fixing that,” He said. “We’re disappointed with last week’s performance but were not down. Our guys are a great group of competitive guys and want to get back out there to play,” Foster said.
Keith Antigiovanni is a free-lance writer in San Diego, California. He has worked for several local newspapers covering sports, government and business. Keith started writing in 1995 after graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Mass Media Communications from the University of San Diego. Aside from working as a sportswriter he has a side business of providing marketing assistance/research for small businesses and also directs,produces and hosts a regular public access television show on Time-Warner Cable named "San Diego Yesterday". Antigiovanni is also a member of the San Diego Sportswriter Association.
