Staying in league race key for Cobras, Badgers

With both teams beating winless Waldron and losing to reigning champion Nashville, Fountain Lake and Arkadelphia meet in a key Class 4A- 7 matchup.

The Cobras and Badgers square off at 7 p. m. on AllCare Field at Badger Stadium, the winner sustaining hope for a share of the conference title and a high playoff seed while the loser faces a challenge to make the postseason.

“It’s really important, but every game is important to us,” Arkadelphia coach J. R. Eldridge said. “We’re going to prepare for each game the exact same way, but it’s extremely important for the both of us.”

The Cobras ( 3- 2, 1- 1) aren’t exactly preparing for this game like any others. Fountain Lake coach Tommy Gilleran has mentioned two teams, Little Rock Christian and Nashville, as circling their calendars this season after the Cobras knocked them off last year, and since

the Badgers escaped with a 4842 victory in double overtime last season, Gilleran has this rematch circled in his calender.

“We want to finish this game,” Gilleran said. “We didn’t finish last year. I think we kind of ran out of gas. When we got to this point in the game, we kind of ran out of gas and they had more left in the tank. They don’t play anyone both ways, and they play really fast. At the end of the game, they’re really fresh and we’re not.”

Fountain Lake comes off a heartbreaking 13- 12 loss at Nashville, its potential winning touchdown in the fourth quarter called back for holding.

“It was tough, especially when we thought we had it and got a holding call on the touchdown,” Gilleran said. “It’s one of those things where I thought our kids played hard. I felt like we gave ourselves a chance to win, but in the end, we didn’t make enough plays offensively or defensively to win that game.”

Arkadelphia snapped a threegame skid in last week’s 48- 26 victory at Waldron, which has lost 38 in a row. The Badgers’ offense has struggled after fouryear starter Ty Kosters went down with a torn ACL in the first half of their season- opening victory over Stuttgart.

Arkadelphia scored only seven points in the first three quarter of a 28- 20 loss to Sheridan, then were stopped six straight times by Nashville, which rallied from 21- 7 down to beat the Badgers 49- 28.

“You can’t go into a football season without understanding that you’re going to face some type of adversity,” said Eldridge, guiding the Badgers to the quarterfinals each of the past two seasons. “That’s just part of the adversity we’ve faced, having one of our best offensive players go down. Every team is going to have to deal with something like that during a football season. I hate it for him because it’s his senior season and he’s a great football player, and I hate it for us because he’s a great football player.

“But you always have to find a way in football to overcome injuries.”

With Kosters out, Arkadelphia leans more on two- year starting quarterback Jeff Blake. Rushing or passing, Blake has accounted for 13 of the team’s 19 touchdowns.

“Jeff is a huge part of our offense,” Eldridge said. “He always has been and will continue to be, so we’ll keep trying to help put him in the right situations to make plays for us.”

Getting the ground game going is vital in Fountain Lake’s Wing T offense, indicative of the Cobras rushing for 106 and 95 yards in their two losses and more than 200 in the three wins. Gilleran was encouraged by his defense at Nashville allowing just 267 yards to a team averaging 524.75.

“They’re playing pretty well,” said Gilleran. “Every game, we’ve fixed some things and every game, we’ve done stuff better. That was huge, especially in a hostile environment in Nashville, to go down there and allow just 13 points and have a chance to win it there at the end. We feel like our defense is playing better.”

Hitting the road for the fourth time, the Cobras can play better, Gilleran says, if they put the Nashville loss behind them.