Ryan Cornelsen watched Carthage’s film this week and came away thinking the team that beat Republic twice last fall has gotten better.
“I would say they’re better than they were a year ago,” Republic’s head coach said on this week’s REPMO Football Show. “They’re really good.”
No. 3 Republic (6-1) hosts No. 2 Carthage (6-1) Friday at 7 p.m. on Senior Night, Republic’s last home game of the regular season. Both teams are 3-0 in the Central Ozark Conference West with one conference game left. Carthage finishes at home against Neosho on Oct. 23, and Republic finishes at Willard.
Republic hasn’t won a conference championship since 2004, when a 41-0 win at Willard earned a share of the COC’s Class 4 division title. Its last outright title came in 1990, the last of 11 straight COC championships.
Carthage’s only loss came in its season opener, 42-13 at Nixa on Aug. 28. Nixa is the only team to beat either school this season. Republic lost 49-6 at Nixa on Sept. 11.
Carthage has won six straight since and outscored those opponents 280-54. It won 36-14 at Webb City on Oct. 2, when the Cardinals were ranked No. 1, and beat Willard 63-0 last Friday. Republic beat Webb City 33-14 last Friday without punting or throwing a pass.
Game page →Landon West, Carthage’s All-State senior running back, has 982 rushing yards and 16 rushing touchdowns in seven games after running for 1,889 yards and 24 touchdowns last season. Junior quarterback Slade Stiffler won the starting job in a three-way competition in August and had 313 rushing yards and eight rushing touchdowns through five games.
“They’ve got two good backs, a quarterback and a tailback, and the tailback’s back from a year ago,” Cornelsen said. “This quarterback’s probably quicker than the guy from a year ago. Offensive line, a lot of those guys are back from last year, and they’re big and they’re really good at what they do. They’ve got some receivers they run jet stuff with.”
He said the defense has good linebackers, defensive linemen and safeties.
“When you see it on film and you watch it, you’ve got to give them some respect, because they are a good program, and this team is really good, just like the years past,” Cornelsen said.
Carthage leads the series 24-1 and is 10-1 at Republic. Republic’s only win was 20-14 at home on Aug. 25, 2023, the opener of the season that ended in the state championship game. Jon Guidie is in his 29th year as a head coach. His Carthage teams won the Class 5 state title in 2019 and lost last year’s title game 34-28 in overtime to Platte County.
Last October at Carthage, Republic scored on three of its first four drives and led 21-0. Preston McCracken’s fourth touchdown put Republic back in front 28-21 with six minutes left, and Carthage scored, missed the two-point try, got the ball back and kicked a 26-yard field goal on the final play to win 30-28. McCracken ran for 233 yards that night. Five weeks later, Carthage beat Republic 31-14 in the District 6 championship game, the third time Carthage has ended Republic’s season.
Nolan Lashley has 1,199 rushing yards and 24 rushing touchdowns in seven games in his first season at running back, two short of the school record of 26 that Jerney Jones set in 2015. Lashley scored four touchdowns against Webb City, when Republic converted all five of its fourth downs.
Cornelsen said Friday comes down to the same things that worked against Webb City.
“We’re going to have to play at an extremely high level with a small margin of error,” he said. “We’ve got to do a good job tackling. We’ve got to make sure we can consistently move the ball. The things we talk about, why we were successful against Webb, those things have got to hold true against Carthage.”
He said this is the kind of game Republic has to win this time of year.
“Those are the kind of teams you’re going to have to be able to play with and beat,” Cornelsen said. “It’s time for us to really raise our level of play and execute at a high level..”
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