Hanover athletics photo

By Joe Sager
D3sports.com

There will be playoff football for Hanover this fall.

The Panthers secured their automatic postseason berth on Saturday, when they cruised past Bluffton, 48-0, to finish unbeaten (5-0) in Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference action. While nice, Hanover’s first conference crown since 2019 quickly became a memory, as the Panthers (6-2 overall) still have two more games left in the regular season.

“In my time here, we hadn’t won a conference championship, so it was a pretty big deal for us,” Hanover junior quarterback Eian Roudebush said. “We still have two more games to take care of to give us a little momentum going into the playoffs.”

The Panthers don’t plan to take their foot of the gas in either of those tilts – Saturday against Otterbein and Nov. 15 against archrival Franklin.

“These two weeks are about us as a team and how we can improve and become playoff ready,” Hanover senior defensive lineman Garron Jenkins said. “It’s about what we can do to improve each week. If we don’t take care of business, there is no greater opportunity. We have to grab the opportunity in front of us. It’s there; we just have to take it. We have one clear mission and that’s to win. We’ll do everything we can to win.”

The games carry some added incentive, too. This week’s game is Senior Day for the 13-member senior class.

“We have 13 seniors on a team of 128. They’ve done a great job leading their position groups,” Hanover coach Matt Theobald said. “Some of those seniors have started two or three years. Some have started just this year. Some are roles players. They are all positive energy guys and I think they’ve done a great job shaping our younger guys.”

An annual rivalry game follows. Franklin pays a visit for the Victory Bell Game. The Panthers own a 48-43-3 edge in that series, 69 of which have been played since the Victory Bell was introduced, and have won the last three encounters.

“That’s going to be a big one,” Theobald said. “These guys understand they have to be perfect every single game to get to where we want to be. This team, they are awesome to coach. They show up to work and have great energy.”

It was a slow start to the season for the Panthers. With a lot of youth throughout its lineup, the team dropped a 23-15 decision at Centre and suffered a 16-7 home loss to Butler, a Division I FCS non-scholarship program. Hanover rebounded for a wild 24-23 win at Alma and has kept winning.

“I think we battled some adversity early on in the year and really didn’t play our best football, but you’re not trying to be your best self early on in the season. You still want to win, but you’re just not always going to be the best version of yourself. You want to be the best version of yourself this time of year. Those were some really quality opponents, too.”

“I love that we had such a difficult schedule starting out. We got to see where we were at as a team and how we’d compete against good challengers and see how we’d come through it all,” Jenkins said. “Even though we lost to Centre, that was one of my favorite games because we fought and battled for all four quarters. After seeing that, I knew what we were capable of this year.”

The Panthers cruised past Rose-Hulman, Mount St. Joseph, Anderson, Manchester and Bluffton to wrap up the HCAC crown. They want to carry that momentum through the rest of the regular season and into the playoffs.

“We’ve been playing really well these past couple weeks,” Roudebush said. “A couple of the teams we’ve played aren’t necessarily the same quality of opponent we’ll see in playoffs. So, not only are we focusing on our game plan, but we’re focused on preparing ourselves for the really good teams we’ll see in the playoffs.”

At this point, Hanover knows it’s more about perfecting its systems than change things up dramatically based on opponent.

“We keep getting better. We are a really young team and, now, we have guys who have been in the fight for a bit,” Theobald said. “We keep practicing hard and staying razor-sharp each and every week. We’re competing against ourselves; that’s been our mindset. This is football and anybody can beat everybody. We can’t look past anyone and we have to stay focused on us. If you listen to the Curt Cignettis or Nick Sabans of the world, they’ll say the same thing. It doesn’t matter who we are playing, we have to show up each week with a great mindset and work hard. It’s been great to see with this group.”

While the Panthers have room to grow, they’re pleased with the progress they’ve made.

“We had a lot of road games early on that put us through the ringer a bit. I think it was good for us, as a team, to go through that. I think it helped us grow together,” Roudebush said. “We’re also a pretty young team, especially offensively. We should have 10 starters coming back (next year) on that side of the ball. Guys are still learning, but getting better each week. You can just kind of see the connections between guys. I think our offensive line has really grown together. They’ve really jelled. Our receiving corps is pretty young, but is blocking well, catching passes and making plays. Our backs have done really well. We’ve had some young guys step up in the backfield, which has been needed at times with injuries.

“We just have to get better every day and see where it takes us.”