Tigers look for payback

A recent nemesis looms for the Smith-Cotton Tiger football team tonight. The Tigers travel to Clinton to take on a Cardinal team that has beaten Smith-Cotton in each of the last two seasons.

Last year Clinton ran the ball effectively, took advantage of several Tiger turnovers and knocked off Smith-Cotton 22-20.

Smith-Cotton (1-0), currently ranked No. 8 in Class 4, has been working hard during a rainy week of practice to improve on its season-opening win last week.

“Our offensive line played way too high,” Smith-Cotton coach Mark Johnson said of last week. “We had to work on them coming down and staying with their blocks a lot longer. So that’s what we really worked on offensively. Defensively we worked on our linebackers stepping up. We started two sophomore inside backers and they came up, but not as well as they need to. We really worked on that part and improving our running game defensively.”

With the heavy rain this week, running back Solomon Watkins, who had a huge game against St. Pius X, may find the field in sloppy condition as the game progresses. Johnson believes that his team should be able to adjust to whatever field conditions it encounters.

“With four inches of rain, it’s going to be muddy no matter where you play unless you’re on turf. I think this year we might be a little more geared toward running the ball more off tackle if we have to. We still want to try to do our normal stuff,” he said.

Clinton (0-1) comes off a difficult outing against Kansas City O’Hara last week. O’Hara grabbed an early lead and was able to pull away with a 49-0 win, but Johnson knows that the Cardinals will be ready for Smith-Cotton when the game begins.

“They lost big last week, but it kind of snowballed on them,” he said of the Cardinals. “They were in the ballgame for the first 15 minutes and all of a sudden it just snowballed on them. They’ve got quite a few seniors playing. Coach Long does a great job with them. They moved the ball very well against O’Hara; they just turned the ball over. We lost to them two years in a row, so going to their place, it’s their first home ballgame, they’re going to be fired up, so we’re going to have to go out and play.”

Last week the Tigers ran the ball effectively and their special teams played well, but the passing offense struggled to gain consistency. If the passing game can improve and Smith-Cotton can stop a Clinton running game that has caused problems in the past, the Tigers should continue to get stronger.

“Our offensive line has to be able to control the line of scrimmage a little bit better than they did last week. We’ve got to be able to stop the run. I mean, we gave up almost 200 yards rushing last week and that’s not acceptable. We’ve got to do better than that defensively. We’ve got to do a better job with our pass protection because we gave up too many hurries and stuff last week. We’ve got to get better in the passing game,” Johnson said.