After suffering a lopsided 42-14 road loss to the Lawrence County Cougars last Friday, the North Pike Jaguars are hoping to bounce back in order to get their first district win against the Florence Eagles at 7 p.m. Friday.
The Eagles are one of two teams that were recently added to the Region 6 district this season along with the Richland Rangers.
“Our biggest thing is just getting our mind on playing football from the first bell, and not wait until the second half,” North Pike head coach Chris Smith said. “I feel like we kind of waited for something bad to happen the other night, instead of going out and making something good happen. I was kind of disappointed in that.
“It’s kind of like the old saying, ‘Take the bull by the horns and let’s go with it. Don’t wait for him to get us.’ ” That’s what I really want us to do Friday night, come out ready to play from the start, and go out and make something happen.”
North Pike’s offense failed to score a touchdown against Lawrence County until the final quarter. It was the Jaguars’ lowest-scoring game this season.
“A lot of that had to do with Lawrence County getting a lot of heat on us,” Smith said. “But a lot of that had to do with the off week, I was worried about us being rusty and our timing being off.
“You can come out and throw balls at practice all week like we did, but it’s still not game time situations. We made a lot of blown assignments last Friday night that we haven’t been making.”
Florence comes into this week’s game averaging 271 rushing yards per game as a team, with their quarterback Brad Dennis leading the team in rushing yards with 505. Behind him is senior running back Titus Lee, who has 441 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns.
“They like to run the football, Smith said. “They’ve got a good running back, he runs hard. Their quarterback runs the ball well also. They’re big up front, their offensive line is really big, so our defensive line’s got to do a good job of staying down, going to their gaps, and taking care of their responsibilities. We’ll need a better job out of linebackers by making better reads.
“I think that the loss may have gotten their attention again. Every once in a while you have to get their attention. I feel like if we come out doing what we’ve been doing, execute, and play hard, then everything else will take care of itself.”
