After winning their first game of the season against Ignacio last week, the Panthers (1-3) return to Cortez on Friday for a homecoming matchup against the Gunnison Cowboys (2-2).<\/p>\n
The Panthers offense found its groove against Ignacio last week, with senior quarterback Cordell Ridings leading the charge.<\/p>\n
Ridings was 12-of-16 passing for 140 yards and a touchdown pass to junior Josh Ramos.<\/p>\n
Interim head coach Scott Conklin praised Ridings\u2019 efficiency, but also noted the decline in dropped passes from the receiving corps.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe caught the ball well,\u201d Conklin said at practice on Monday. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working really hard on the fundamentals, and it showed just in the week or week-and-a-half.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers also continued to exploit opponents on the ground, rushing for 248 yards as a team, and with junior Coby Baer breaking another big run for a score.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great game. The kids worked hard ,and we were able to move the ball, and the defense shut them down.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers will welcome Gunnison on Friday for their homecoming game, marking the opening of conference play.<\/p>\n
Conklin and the M-CHS coaching staff are preparing to defend against Gunnison\u2019s size, as well as its unique Maryland-I formation, which features three backs in the backfield set up behind the quarterback.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be interesting,\u201d Conklin said. \u201cBut we\u2019re definitely going to plan to stop the run and force them to pass.\u201d<\/p>\n
The homecoming game is set to kickoff at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M-CHS faces 2-2 Gunnison and its unusual I-formation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6328,6313],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-2-more-sports","category-sports-2","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109020"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}