Solon Football Team Braces For Playoff Fight Against Mentor

Win or lose, the past is always with us.

The Mentor and Solon football teams will face off Saturday night for the right to play in the coveted Division I, Region 1 final next weekend, but their Oct. 6 regular-season meeting will loom large over this weekend’s matchup.

The Cardinals (10-1) won that Northeast Ohio Conference Valley Division contest, 44-20, and proved that Mentor head coach football Steve Trivisonno’s five-receiver passing attack could handle a mighty defense on the road.

For the Comets (10-1), it marked the end of their 20-game regular season home-winning streak and left them hoping that if the opportunity presented itself again, the proper adjustments would gain them greater glory.

The Comets, ranked 10th in the Associated Press’ Division I state poll, will get their chance at redemption, while the Cardinals, ranked fifth, will attempt to demonstrate their offensive prowess again in the Division I, Region 1 semifinal contest, this time at Byers Field in Parma with a 7 p.m. kickoff.

To arrive at this meeting, top-seeded Mentor, whose only loss came in the regular-season finale at Twinsburg, 38-35, ran over Cleveland JFK, 48-16, at home, while Solon went on the road to handle Willoughby South, 37-12, in their opening-round playoff games last Saturday evening.

This is the third time in the last nine years the two schools will meet in the playoffs after facing each other in the regular season. The Cardinals won in 2006 and 2007.

Trivisonno said he feels no reason to change an offense that averages 38.7 points per game making his game preparations for Saturday pretty concise.

“We are what we are,” Trivisonno said.

Solon head football coach Jim McQuaide knows any discussion of this game must involve Cardinals junior quarterback Mitch Trubisky who went 19-of-31 passing for 344 yards and a touchdown in the earlier contest. Trubisky also ran in three scores.

The Cardinals quarterback has 36 passing touchdowns on the season and 11 rushing touchdowns.

“He’s a great player. There’s no doubt about it. They do a tremendous job of spreading you out. You can’t give them the same thing to look at every single play,” McQuaide said. “You have to mix up what you do both rushing and dropping back and covering and moving guys around. The best way to help our defense is to keep the ball away from them.”

For Solon, that likely means eating up the clock with leading rusher Khoury Crenshaw who averages 4.8 yards a rush and has seven rushing touchdowns on the season.

In the October game, Trubisky found Brandon Fritts for a 58-yard completion on the game’s first play from scrimmage which became a kind of omen and then ended the drive with a 4-yard run. With a 1-yard Trubisky scoring run off a Solon fumble, the Comets found themselves down, 14-0.

Though Patrick Kramer's 38-yard TD pass to Darian Hicks answered the score, the Comets trailed, 24-6, after one quarter and were effectively out of the game.

Mentor, of course, has the same playoff ambitions as Solon but has the glow of that October victory tucked in its mental back pocket. Often overlooked is that Mentor’s defense forced three turnovers with some leading to crucial scores.

“If our defensive guys get themselves mentally ready to play, I think they’re very good. If they don’t, I think we’re just average, so that’s going to be the key,” Trivisonno said. “They’ve got to show up there with that mental focus and mental toughness to get after it and play the way they can.”

Solon leads the all-time series, 9-8.