By T. Scott Boatright
Lincoln Preparatory School plays its 2024 home football opener starting at 7 p.m. as the Panthers play host to Magnolia School of Excellence on Panthers Field.
Both teams opened the season with losses last week as the Panthers fell 36-6 at D’Arbonne Woods while the Mariners went on the road and lost 58-6 at Glenbrook.
And both teams won only two games last season, with MSE going 2-8 while Lincoln Prep finished at 2-7.
The Panthers and Mariners last met in 2021, when Lincoln Prep traveled to Shreveport and came home with a 45-7 win.
Panthers coach Glen Hall is hoping to see a complete 48-minutes of focused play from his team, something that didn’t happen last week when it all suddenly fell apart, starting with one of numerous bad shotgun snaps by Lincoln Prep that resulted in a safety that pushed the Timberwolves’ advantage to 8-0 with 2:46 remaining in the second quarter.
The late first-half storm was only the beginning for the Panthers at that point.
D’Arbonne Woods stretched its lead to 16-0 on an 8-yard run followed by a two-point conversion run before the Timberwolves added an 80-yard interception return for a score with no time remaining in the first half.
“We did it to ourselves, and good football teams don’t let that kind of thing happen,” said Panthers coach Glen Hall. “We weren’t a very good football team last week.
“But the season is still early and there’s plenty of time to turn things around, and this week’s game is an opportunity to do that. But we’ve got to come out focused from the start and play that way until the very end. We need to go out and play well in all three phases of the game, and we need to go out and protect the football and play smart.”
The Panthers did play better in the second half at D’Arbonne Woods, and that is something Hall hopes his team can build on. Lincoln Prep’s lone score came with 6:48 remaining as quarterback Jordan Brown connected on a scoring strike to Cenario Wilson.
Senior running back D’Tavion Wright also ran hard despite suffering a thigh stinger early in the contest.
“We know who we are as a team,” Hall said. “We know what we do well and what we don’t do well. I just must get them to guy into the system and buy into the things that we do well.
“First of all, we know it all starts for us with our defense, so we need to focus on shutting (MSE) down. We don’t need them to suddenly change the game the way D’Arbonne Woods did last week. If we can dominate on the defensive, I think our offense can do enough to earn a win for us. But it all starts on defense.”
MSE has never defeated Lincoln Prep since first fielding a football during the 2019 season.
Lincoln Prep won 43-6 that season and defeated the Mariners 52-34 in 2020.
After seeing his team start strong before self-destructing last week, Hall is preaching one main keyword to the Panthers.
“Consistency,” Hall said. “We need to be consistent in the way we practice. We need to be consistent in the way we snap the football to our quarterbacks. We need to be consistent in the way we play our games. We need to keep that consistency up the whole game.
“If we can do that, I think we can become a better football team. We have talent. But we must be consistent in our focus and in the way we play.”
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