By Nathan Kanter

Vikings win big in final week, finish season 4-2

Oct 14, 2016 | 2:07 PM

The final win of the regular season was so convincing for the Comp Vikings, they were able to get every player in uniform into action at some point.

By the half, the team was leading the Evan Hardy Souls 36-0, allowing them to rest their starters for the second half.

“We were really happy with the way things went,” head coach Mike Humenny said in a phone interview on Friday. “We were in a position where we were able to get a bunch of our backups [into the game] in the second half… which is a always a good thing just for those guys who are working hard in practice every day.”

The key to the Vikings 36-14 win over the Souls was their run game.

Specifically, tailback J.T. Lamb, a junior who had previously been out with an wrist injury, was healthy on Thursday and was key to his team’s success on offence.

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“We went out with [Lamb] as our primary guy in the backfield.” Humenny said. “We were able to move the ball really well along the ground and just a couple turnovers by the opposition allowed us to keep the ball on offence.

“Our run game last night was much better than it was the last couple of weeks.”

On the defensive side of things, Humenny was pleased to see his defensive line and linebackers disrupting the flow of things by getting into the oppositions backfield all game long.

“They have a really athletic quarterback who moves around quite well but I think we really took advantage of some mismatches along the line of scrimmage,” Humenny said. “The last three weeks especially, our defence is kind of ramping up each game and they’re peaking right now going into the playoffs.”

The win means the Vikings finish the regular season at 4-2 and although it’s technically not determined yet who they will play, it’s very likely they will face off against Marion Graham in Saskatoon next week.

Marion Graham defeated the Vikings earlier this season by a score of 30-7 two weeks ago.

One thing that makes the Falcons tricky is two of their tall receivers, Alexander Dewar and Connor Sparks, who also both play defence.

“They are very good athletes and they also play defensive back,” Humenny said. “We need to come up with a game plan to not only take care of them offensively but on defence we’ve got to be smart about our shots we take downfield if we throw the deep ball.”

But given how well the run game worked now that more guys are healthy, Humenny made it clear the run game also needs to come up big in their first playoff game.

“We’d be foolish to not continue to employ our running attack,” he said. “We’re going to go into that game similar to how we’ve done the last two weeks where we’re going to try to establish the run and take control of the line of scrimmage and then good things tend to happen from there but it’s not going to be easy. Marion Graham is very well coached and they have a number of very good athletes.”

Now that the weather is colder, special teams begin to play a larger role as well, as turnovers often become more frequent.

It may be more of a mental thing, Humenny said, as both teams have to deal with the same conditions, but it does become more imperative to not fumble the ball, especially when your special teams are out on the field.

“We’ve just got to make sure that our punt and kick off returns, that first of all we gain possession of the football and then set up a return from that point,” Humenny said. “We’ve just been a little bit off in the last couple of weeks and I think its partially to do with how the weather has been.

“We’re going to put a lot of time into [special teams] next week looking forward to that playoff game.”

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11