Come Friday evening, either the Montezuma-Cortez Panthers or the Ignacio Bobcats will have their first win of the season.<\/p>\n
Ignacio will host the Panthers in a matchup between two 0-3 teams hungry for a victory.<\/p>\n
The Panthers fell to Grand Junction Central 46-20 last week, but the team has shown signs of improvement.<\/p>\n
And their goal is to continue to get better as the season moves forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cOffensively and defensively, we\u2019re just trying to take small steps and get the guys better,\u201d defensive coordinator Keith Mikhail said at practice on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if it\u2019s just a step better than they were yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers defense is holding opponents to an average of 112 passing yards per game, and after giving up 625 rushing yards in weeks one and two combined, M-CHS held Central to just 94 yards on the ground last week.<\/p>\n
They will look to contain an Ignacio offense that has scored just six points all season.<\/p>\n
Offensively, after rushing for 160 yards last week, Panthers\u2019 running back Coby Baer will face a Bobcats defense that gave up 360 rushing yards to Hotchkiss in week one and 276 yards to Paonia in week two.<\/p>\n
The Panthers are well aware of the opportunity to claim their first victory, but they aren\u2019t rushing the process.<\/p>\n
The coaches understand that the season may be an uphill climb, but they are staying patient and are focused on improving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nothing that happens overnight,\u201d Mikhail said. \u201cWe may not see it for three or four weeks down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M-CHS prepares for winless Bobcats<\/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":[5770],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109278","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=109278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109278"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}