By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — For five weeks, Ruston High was on the road four times, earning a 4-1 record overall so far through the season.
And as difficult of a schedule stretch as that was, it’s now time for arguably the top district in Louisiana: the beginning of 2-5A with undefeated Ouachita (5-0) coming to two, looking to hard the Bearcats their second loss of the season after Stephenville got the better of Ruston in a neutral site contest last week 28-12 in Longview.
For Ruston Head Coach Jerrod Baugh, his squad is going to have to shake off the loss and get ready for a talented Lion squad along with fighting through the distractions of homecoming festivities.
“I think it’s been a pretty good week of practice (following the loss),” Baugh said. “We’re still a little more inconsistent than what I would like. But there’s a lot of things going on this week with homecoming and and all of those things. But I think they’ve handled that pretty well. I feel pretty confident that we’re ready to ready to play a ball game. I think it’ll be a great atmosphere tomorrow with all of those things going on. I think we’ve got a lot of classes coming in, alumni to do some homecoming things beforehand, and so I would expect like a really good atmosphere for a good football game.”
The Lions come in with an unblemished record and sit atop the Non-Select, Division I power rankings at 5-0. Ouachita’s offense is averaging 42.0 points per game, and most recently beat Franklin Parish 42-14 on the road.
“They have a very talented offense — I think they’re talented in all of their skill positions and can score the ball at any moment from any position, and that’s the scariest thing about it,” Baugh said. “It’s not one of those things where you say like, hey, they they throw the ball around, and f we can really stop them from passing it, then we’ll be we’ll be okay. Or maybe the running back’s really good, and if we can stop them from running the football, then we’ll be okay. They seem to be more evenly spread and that spreads you out defensively and that makes it tough.
“They’re scary defensively, defensively too. I think they’re going to do what they can to try to get (senior defensive tackle Dylon) Beryman matched up one-on-one with our offensive line guys in the running game. We’re just going to have to dig in and do the best we can with handling him, and he’s not the only one. They got good players out there everywhere. They’re hard to handle. And the defensive line and the secondary guys always run to the football really well. I feel like they’ve kind of been building for this year to make a push in the playoffs. It’ll be a great challenge for our football team.”
On the Bearcat side, Baugh does see some good matchups for his team, particularly with skill positions on offense and senior Ra’Keem Potts on the defensive line.
“Ra’Keem Potts is always a bad matchup,” Baugh said. “He’s just so fast off of the football any time he’s matched up on a bigger offensive lineman that doesn’t move real well. We need him to be able to make some plays that. The problem with that is if he beats somebody on a pass play, then we’ve got to keep their quarterback in the pocket. We can’t allow him to get out of the pocket and and make plays because he can surely run whenever he does. So we have to be careful when we choose to send pressure to keep him trapped and in the pocket.
“On offense, I like some of the matchups that we have, skill position-wise. And we’re going to need to make some plays offensively and really sustain some drives to keep their offense off of the field.”
Last week, Ruston was without junior tight end Ahmad Hudson and lost junior tight end Cullen Clark early in the game against the Yellow Jackets. Hudson will be back in a limited capacity, though Clark unfortunately will not be available.
“We’re going to try to limit what he’s out there doing in the game so that he’s not thrown in headfirst into the pool quite so fast,” Baugh said of Hudson. “But it’ll be good to have him back especially since Cullen is still out. That’s normally a big thing that we do offensively is have a couple of tight ends just because it limits the things that they can do alignment-wise and the blitz packages that people use. It really limits that whenever you can do that. But we’ve worked with junior Hunter Soto at the tight end spot, which he’s played as a freshman and as a sophomore. So the transition for him coming back over some to give us some help at the second tight end isn’t as big of a deal as what it could have been. It will be good to be able to have those packages back in.”
Sophomore running back Dalen Powell leads the team in rushing yards with 785 yards and eight touchdowns. Despite missing last week, Hudson still leads the team in receiving with 19 catches for 288 yards and six touchdowns.
Junior quarterback Sam Hartwell has thrown for 713 yards and 10 touchdowns through the air while getting four more scores on the ground.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Hoss Garrett Stadium. Tickets can be purchased on the GoFAN app. The game will be broadcast on Q94.1 FM and streamed on BearcatNationNetwork.com.
