SPENCERVILLE-The Spencerville Bearcats come in to Friday night’s game riding a five game losing streak but the hopes of week 11 still remain in the balance. In order to reach those goals they must beat Ada this week to keep themselves alive.
Head coach Kyle Koenig highlights one key thing from last week against Allen East.
“Last week against Allen East what I took away from the film is that we were, for the most part, in the right spots to make plays defensively we just did not finish,” said Koenig. “We did not tackle well, which has been another big emphasis this week. We also need to improve our pad level. Alot of times we are getting to the right spots but because we are not low enough, we either continue to get moved by offensive linemen or we do not have a strong base to hold our ground to make a tackle. These are things we talked about throughout the week, and I am looking forward to seeing how the kids respond to the challenges that were put in front of them this week.”
Offensively it should be a ground and pound night as both teams want to run the football. Spencerville has averaged 105.3 yards a game on the ground while the Bulldogs averaged 123.5 on the ground.
The Bulldogs are coming off a 28-0 victory over Jefferson last week and head coach Toby Smith knows that they have a good test in front of them on Friday.
“We have been playing with young kids for a while now,” said Smith. “So in theory they are no longer young and that helps. The victory was always satisfying last week but we understand that we need to play better if we expect to win this week.”
If Spencerville wants to be successful on Friday it must get to the hands of Nate Coulter. Coulter has 457 rushing yards on the season and 148 receiving yards on the season despite missing some time this season with a shoulder injury.
This is special for Spencerville as it’s homecoming week and Koenig understands what comes out of that.
“It’s homecoming week and there is always a lot of excitement when it comes to that,” added Koenig. “The kids are excited to be back at home and to play in front of the hometown as well as any alumni that come back to watch this game. With that being said, we are a young team, and we have to make sure that we stay focused even with all the other events that are happening this Friday Night. We are a young team, and this is a must win game for us if we want to keep our playoff hopes alive and I am sure Ada feels the same way.”
It will be a game that will be won in the trenches on Friday and both coaches know what they have to do to pickup the victory on Friday.
“Spencerville has some very physical kids that we are going to have to contend with if we expect to be successful.” Concluded Smith.
“Ada is a solid team,” concluded Koenig. “They have a tremendous run game that has caused some issues for a lot of teams. They have a big running that can run people over and a Quarterback that is very smart on his reads and is very athletic to make plays with his legs. I would say their offensive style is very similar to Paulding who we played earlier this year. If we want to win this game our pad level needs to be lower, we need to be able to tackle and we need to put up some points. The last two weeks we have moved the ball fairly well, we just have not found the endzone very often and we need to be able to change that this week. Being able to gain first downs and put long drives together is no longer good enough for us if we do not finish it off.”
Pregame festivities will begin at approximately 6:30 to announce the homecoming king and queen.
If you can’t make it to the game be sure to tune in to Zsports3 as Nate Stidham and Shane Falke will have all the action with the pregame show at 6:30 followed by kickoff at 7pm.
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