Bob Lutz: Few like Ike in Friday’s 5A semifinal matchup with Carroll

The odds of Eisenhower pulling off an upset Friday night against Bishop Carroll in a Class 5A semifinal football game are low.

Maybe lower than low.

Eisenhower is 7-4 after a 2-3 start to the season. The Tigers have only been in existence for four years and won five games in the first three years.

They’re going to beat Carroll, which has won two of the past three 5A championships?

Now that’s a good one.

But you know what? Sports is full of the unexpected. Sure, the script usually holds and if that’s the case this week, then the Eagles will win by a couple of touchdowns or more.

Scripts, though, can be flipped. And Eisenhower, which has upended Kapaun Mount Carmel and Maize South so far in the playoffs, isn’t ceding anything.

“We’re scrappers,” said Eisenhower coach Marc Marinelli. “They play so hard and we get every ounce of ability out of every kid. I think these players relish that underdog role. I’m sure when we drew Kapaun in the first round that everyone thought they were going to roll right through us.”

Kapaun is Kapaun and Carroll is Carroll and Marinelli gets the difference.

It’ll take the best performance of the season for Eisenhower. It’ll likely take a performance the Tigers’ players weren’t even aware they had in them to pull off this upset.

Isn’t this what makes sports fun? Sure, we know the probable outcome. But it’s not a definite. There are variables. Eisenhower will have the home-field advantage and a bunch of raucous, believing students pulling for the Tigers.

“We most definitely relish a challenge like this,” Eisenhower senior wide receiver Drake Damon said. “The whole year, no one has picked us. We’re kind of used to it.”

Marinelli, who was an assistant to Andover Central’s Tom Audley and Andale’s Gary O’Hair early in his coaching career, spent three years as head coach at Hesston before taking the Eisenhower job. He’s from Mulvane and he and his wife wanted to be closer to their families.

The appeal of coaching at a school where the paint had just dried was strong, too.

“That feeling that you could create something when there was nothing there,” is how Marinelli put it. “I could come in and do exactly what I wanted to do.”

Marinelli said he learned how to break down tape and get a feel for an opponent from Audley, who would go over game film to help prepare his teams.

O’Hair, meanwhile, taught Marinelli the art of developing players in the weight room and exacting every drop of potential.

“They’re both phenomenal coaches,” Marinelli said. “A couple of years ago, Andale starts 0-5 and then rips off six straight wins. When I look back on it, I’m just glad I kept my mouth shut around both of those guys and soaked it all in.”

Those experiences and 21 wins in three seasons at Hesston, Marinelli said, might have made him a little too confident. Humble pie awaited.

“Coach O’Hair used to tell me that the best advice he ever got was to not overestimate your own coaching ability,” Marinelli said. “You’ve got to have kids to win. I think I went through a little ego part where I thought that because I was in all these great places that it was going to be automatic here.”

It was anything but. Eisenhower had the shiny new facilities but was lacking a football team.

So a week after the 2014 season ended, Damon said, the team went to work.

“The difference with our team now is leadership and I feel like we all put in a lot more work in the offseason,” he said. “We really started going after it really hard.”

Marinelli said Damon has been a team leader since becoming a starter as a freshman. Damon is happy to finally get some positive results.

“It was a struggle,” he said.

Eisenhower’s seven wins this season are two more than they had in their first three years. The season has been a success, whether or not the Tigers beat Carroll on Friday.

Isn’t there a danger the Eisenhower players are satisfied just to get this far?

Marinelli says they better not be. And, he says, that kind of thinking doesn’t fit with the character of his team.

“We bring our kids in for film and meetings on Sunday nights and this week I told them there are programs out there that have 20 or 30 years of tradition and never reach the semifinals,” Marinelli said. “If we’re here we might as well give it our best to go play for a ring and our seniors have bought into that.

“I haven’t seen any lack of focus because we’re playing Carroll. In fact, it’s probably the opposite. If you’re going to get out of 5A West, sooner or later you’re going to have to play BC.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Few like Ike in Friday’s 5A semifinal matchup with Carroll."