Matadors hope for improvement tonight in 2nd game of season
Arizona Western football coach Tom Minnick is hoping that the belief that the biggest improvements for a team occur between the first and second games of the season is true for this year’s team.
The top-ranked Matadors opened their season last week with a 21-14 victory at Eastern Arizona, but Minnick came away not particularly impressed, and knows his team will need to continue to get better starting with tonight’s game against Pima in Tucson.
“We didn’t play very well, kind of played undisciplined, but I’m hoping that was just because it was the first game,” Minnick said Friday of the win in Thatcher. “We’re just looking for them to come together more as a team instead of individuals, that’s the main problem I think we have. Sometimes you’ve got a bunch of transfers and it takes some time.”
Still, the Matadors performance was enough to keep them at the top spot in this week’s NJCAA rankings, where they opened at No. 1 in the preseason.
“Now we have a target on our back all the way through, which is fine if you win them all because you’re in the national championship hopefully, but you’ve got to win them all,” Minnick said. “And
7 p.m. today, Tucson
that’s going to be a hard task in itself. We’ll see what happens.”
Tonight’s game should be a fairly good measuring stick. Pima (1-1 overall) opened its season two weeks ago against No. 4 Trinity Valley, and was blown out by a score of 57-3.
Pima went just 3-6 last season, with two losses to AWC (20-0 and 21-9). The year before, the Aztecs went 7-4 overall and 1-1 against the Matadors.
“They’ve been better the past couple of years,” Minnick said of Pima. “If we figure out where they’re coming from, pick up blitzes and stuff, we’ll be alright. But we need to be better than last week. If we play really bad we’ll lose.”
A week ago, the Matadors trailed Eastern Arizona by 14 at the half, before scoring 21 unanswered points in the second half to steal the victory.
Tonight’s game is one of two times the Matadors and Aztecs will meet this season. They’ll also meet on Oct. 21 in Yuma, which will be the game that counts as a Western States Football League contest.