The Acorn's High School Football Game of the Week
Newbury Park Panthers (8-1) at Thousand Oaks Lancers (5-4) Friday, 7 p.m.
By Thomas Gase tgase@theacorn.com

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers GAME TIME- Thousand Oaks quarterback Ian Shultis will have to play big if Newbury Park can limit running back John Lister.

The Newbury Park High football team had plans of celebrating at least a share of the Marmonte League championship last Friday night but came up just a little short against Moorpark- two yards to be exact.

With the Panthers trailing Moorpark 19-13 with 5 seconds left and the ball on the Musketeer 5yard line, NPHS quarterback Colby Cameron tried to run into the end zone.

Cameron's attempt came up empty, however, as the signalcaller was tackled on the 2-yard line by Musketeer defenders Corey Sandoval and Joey Eckert. The loss ended Newbury Park's perfect season and put its record in the Marmonte League at 5-1.

Now an old rivalry will get even bigger when the Panthers travel to Thousand Oaks High in the teams' regularseason finale. Last week Thousand Oaks beat Simi Valley, 35-27, putting the Lancers' league record at 4-2.

This is where things get very confusing.

Technically, there could be a four-way tie for first place in the league if Thousand Oaks beats Newbury Park and Moorpark beats Westlake.

If Newbury and Westlake both win, there would be a tie between those two squads, with the Panthers getting the No. 1 playoff seed thanks to a 27-13 win over the Warriors on Oct. 5.

For more information on the Marmonte's possible tiebreaker situations, see page 49.

"Westlake only has one loss in league, just like us, but we beat them so we would get the No. 1 ranking for playoffs," Newbury Park head coach George Hurley said. "That being said, we still need to beat Thousand Oaks. If we don't win, then none of the other stuff matters."

Newbury Park had a chance to take care of its business at home against Moorpark but couldn't quite get the job done in a wild game that featured an inoperable scoreboard.

"The refs did a good job of telling us the time of the game and giving us updates," Hurley said.

"We had a lot of other distractions (last) week with Halloween and school, and I don't think we were focused enough coming into this game."

If anything, the Panther defense must focus on stopping the run.

Last week Moorpark sophomore Austin Edmonson ran 24 times for 121 yards. This week the Panthers will have to deal with Lancer running back John Lister, who rushed for 209 yards and three touchdowns against Simi Valley. Lister also caught two additional touchdowns, including one for 75 yards.

Although Lister has been tough to stop, Thousand Oaks head coach Mike Leibin said the whole team will have to execute well for the Lancers to win.

"We have a lot in our game plan," Leibin said. "To beat a team like Newbury Park, you need your whole team executing and playing well. I thought we did a good job against Simi Valley of executing on offense and putting some points on the board."

Leibin said he was also pleased with his team's defense in Week 9.

"I would've liked the scoring to have been down a little bit, but for the first time our defense did a good job of creating turnovers," Leibin said. "We're going to need more of the same against Newbury Park."