Raiders to host powerful J-Prep
By By Ryan Satcher / staff writer
September 2, 2004
The Lamar Raiders will continue their tough opening stretch of the football season when they host Jackson Prep Friday night at 7.
The game will be the second of four games the Raiders will play against teams that competed for state championships last season.
According to Lamar coach Mac Barnes, the Raiders will have to improve on mistakes they made last Friday night and overcome Jackson Prep's reputation this week.
"One, we have to correct the mistakes we made last week," said Barnes. "And, two, we have to overcome the tradition of Jackson Prep. We have to expect to win."
Last week, Lamar jumped out to an early lead over Heritage Academy on the road but had to hold off a late charge fueled by turnovers to take a 30-20 win to open the season.
"For the first game, we did some good things," said Barnes. "We made some critical mistakes but they are correctable. We were pretty pleased."
Most of the mistakes came in a long third quarter for Lamar last week but the Raiders have worked to correct the problems this week in practice.
"We lost some confidence in the third quarter last week but we've working on our execution this week in practice," said Barnes. "We need to run the ball better on the inside and we'll probably use some different formations this week. We didn't use everything last week and we'll have a few things different."
Scott Owen led the team with 114 yards on the ground last week and also threw for 125 yards in the victory. Dustin Gray caught four of the passes for 30 yards and Brannon Harrison had three catches for 29 yards.
According to Barnes, Lamar avoided any major injuries in the game with the Patriots last week and should be ready to play on Friday night.
"We are probably in better shape than we were last week," said Barnes. "We have a couple of guys that are still sore but we have 41 players on the team and all of them are ready to play."
The game will be the first MPSA Class AAA game for both squads and should add excitement.
"This is our first division game and if you can beat one of the bigger schools it goes a long way in the division," said Barnes. "In the past we were able to beat a couple of the bigger schools and it basically won the division for us. If you can slide in and win a game like this it can make a big difference."
