Seeding up for grabs as Lions host Knights

JESSIEVILLE — After its 4832 victory at Genoa Central last week, Jessieville looks to carry on with the energy it put forth in the second half as the Lions host Centerpoint tonight at Don Phillips Field.

Jessieville head coach T.J. Burk was disappointed with the way the Lions ( 3- 3, 2-1 3A-5) started last week’s contest.

“We started off kind of slow — just shooting ourself in the foot with mistakes, penalties, and turnovers,” he said. “We got those fixed, and in the second half we played better and started executing. … Anytime you come off a conference win, you’ve got to try and continue that momentum, and we’re going to try to do that tomorrow night.”

Centerpoint head coach Cary Rogers expects the contest to be evenly-matched as the Lions and Knights (4-2, 1-1) execute similar play styles.

“We’ve both got junior quarterbacks, and they’ve both been quarterbacking games against each other since the seventh grade, and it’s a pretty even match,” he said. “We know it’s going to be a tough game, and it’ll make a big difference in seeding and playoff for conference, so we’re just excited about it and know it’s going to be a tough game. We’re looking forward to it. We’re very similar in what we do. They’re sprinting, throwing it, running their quarterback — we don’t run the quarterback as much as they do. We run very similar defense, three stack, so it’s what we see a lot of in practice. Shouldn’t be much unfamiliarity, and it’s a good matchup.”

“It should be a good, physical football game,” Burk agreed.

“They’re big up front, and they play very physical. They’ve got speed as well, so it’ll be a tough matchup. We do a lot of the same stuff scheme-wise, offensively and defensively. It should be a good high school football game.”

Rogers said the Knights’ game plan is “just keep doing what we always do.”

“We try to have a good runpass balanced approach on offense and just kind of adjust as the game goes if we’re having success one more than the other,” Rogers said. “And just a lot of pressure on defense. That’s what we do every week so we’ll bring that with us Friday.”

Jessieville, on the other hand, plans to focus its attention on stopping the run.

“When they go play action, we’ve got to be able to cover the pass,” Burk said. “It’s all going to come down to playing good defense then executing on offense.”

Centerpoint is looking to focus on Jessieville junior quarterback Carson Hair throughout the night while the Lions hone in on sophomore Tristan Rader and freshman Hayden Hernandez.

“( Rader) is probably their go-to guy,” Burk said. “(Hernandez) up front is a load to handle, so we’ve got to make sure we can handle them. They’ve got other guys that can hurt us as well, but we’ve just got to execute.”

Both teams are in good shape healthwise with the exception of one missing player for Centerpoint.

“We’ve got all but one availabl,e and he’s been out for several weeks, so we’re going loaded with what we’ve been using the last few weeks,” Rogers said. “Hopefully it’ll be enough.”

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.