Big emotions at Little Battle of Palouse
Sep. 8—It will be emotional for Moscow's first-year football coach Rob Bafus on Friday.
Bafus attended and played football at Pullman High School, Moscow's opponent, under the tutelage of the late Ray Hobbs.
Hobbs coached the Greyhounds for 34 years. At the time he retired in 1985, Hobbs was the fourth-winningest coach in Washington high school history with 188 victories. He died on Feb. 9, 2018, at the age of 95.
"I don't want to make it about me, but when I was in school we played up at Martin Stadium," Bafus said. "So I've never played under the lights at Hobbs Field."
Hobbs left a substantial impact on Bafus' life, not only on the football field, but in life as well.
"I'm getting butterflies talking about it," Bafus said. "I get emotional even thinking about it. Hobbs was my mentor. He helped me early and all through my coaching career at Troy. He was always calling me up and giving me handwritten letters and encouragement."
Bafus now finds himself on the opposite sideline of the annual Little Battle of the Palouse rivalry game on the field named after his mentor.
"I'm already getting trash talk from my Pullman buddies that played under Hobbs with me," Bafus said. "They're showing up from out of town, and I know they'll be there for me, but they'll be in their Greyhounds gear, and they cant wait to show me."
Pullman and Moscow each suffered double-digit defeats this past Friday. The Greyhounds fell 44-2 to Lakeside, and the Bears dropped their game 47-0 to Clarkston.
Both teams are looking for a bounce back in the rivalry showdown.
"When you go into a Week 1 game, you got about 40 different scenarios you can come away with, but you just want to find an identity," Pullman coach David Cofer said. "We unfortunately weren't able to do that against Lakeside. We made a lot of mistakes especially with a team that's full of sophomores."
Moscow has a little momentum in the rivalry, winning the past two meetings after losing seven straight to Pullman.
For the Bears to extend their streak, they will need more output from their offense, especially in the run game. Last week, Clarkston held Moscow to minus-4 yards rushing.
"We need to do a better job running the ball," Bafus said. "We've been behind the chains a lot the last two weeks, and its forced us to make up a lot of ground."
Luckily for the Bears, the Pullman defense didn't seem to be an immovable force in its first game against Lakeside.
The Greyhounds managed to prevent a shutout in their opener thanks to a Cotton Sears sack in the end zone, resulting in a safety.
Other than the safety, the Pullman defense allowed three touchdowns of 20 or more yards.
"Our angles were really bad last week," Coffer said. "We have to improve our tackling and just doing our job defensively. You learn a lot when you put a game on film and luckily, I think we have. We're hoping to improve our tackling in order to limit big plays."
The two offenses have struggled to score points, but even more, the game will be a battle between two defenses that have struggled to keep teams out of the end zone.
Whoever gets the ball last might be the one celebrating their first victory.
Pixley may be contacted at (208) 848-2290, tpixley@lmtribune.com or on Twitter @TreebTalks.
