By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON — Six days after a 21-14 loss to Edna Karr at the Caesars Superdome, Ruston returns home to face Catholic of Baton Rouge at 7 p.m. Friday at James Field at Hoss Garrett Stadium.
The No. 2 Bearcats (2-1) rallied from a 14-0 deficit Saturday to tie No. 1 Eda Karr before the Cougars scored the winning touchdown with 9:31 to play. Catholic comes to Ruston at 1-2.
Ruston head coach Jerrod Baugh said the Saturday trip to New Orleans served its purpose, and while he would have loved to snap the Cougars’ long winning streak, there was still plenty of learned opportunities in the loss.
“Just like it is any other time that we play a really good football team — and we’ve played three of them and we’re fixing to play four — I think doing that this early in the year, it was really productive,” Baugh said. “I thought it was a good trip. I think the kids handled it well. We were there on time, good on the bus, handled getting into the Superdome. So there shouldn’t have been anything that caught us off guard about that trip.”
The game itself was another matter.
“Obviously, playing a really good football team, you have to be at the top of your game, and we weren’t,” Baugh said. “We can’t spot a team like that 14 (in the first quarter), and then we rally back and get it tied up.”
The moment that stayed with Baugh came on Ruston’s first possession of the second half — a drive the Bearcats kept alive with a fake punt.
“I think the missed opportunity that probably sticks out the most to me, that I thought would have changed the outlook of the ball game, was when we had a good drive going the first series of the second half and it kind of fizzled out,” Baugh said. “We faked the punt to extend it, and we have first-and-10 on their 25-yard line, and we don’t get any points out of it.”
A lead there, Baugh said, could have put Karr in unfamiliar territory.
“Karr’s won a lot of ball games in a row. Won a lot of ball games, period,” Baugh said. “I don’t know that those kids that are playing have ever been behind in a ball game. How do they respond to that? And if they have been behind, it hasn’t been much. So I think if we’re able to get some points, and for sure a touchdown, and then they get the football and they’re trying to figure out what to do, it just changes the way the ball game is going to be played.”
Baugh pointed to the high snap on a Karr punt in the final seconds, which Ruston recovered at the Karr 16, as evidence of what that pressure can do.
“I think that’s something that’s probably really uncharacteristic of those guys, to make that mistake,” Baugh said. “But when you’re under the pressure of that, that’s when errors are made.”
Ruston also let a goal-line stand go to waste with the game still tied. The Bearcats went three plays and out, one of them a penalty on Ruston, and Karr took over at the Ruston 33 after the punt.
“I think our defense gave our offense an opportunity, making the stop on the 1-yard line,” Baugh said. “Have that big stop, have an opportunity to push the ball out of there and at least be able to punt it to the other end, and we can’t get a first down. The defense has got to go right back out there with a short field to defend. You just can’t do that against really good football teams.”
Three games in, Baugh said his team has not yet put together four full quarters on any given night. The defense has come closest, he said, and outside of Karr’s opening series was solid Saturday. The offense has been the area where he wants to see improvement.
“You can’t score the ball every series; I’m not crazy enough to think that,” Baugh said. “But I feel like you can be productive in drives and not score the football. The three-and-outs, the no-first-down series, are just really unacceptable with the guys that we have out there. We’ve just got to develop more consistency with what we’re doing.”
And when you play the type of schedule that Baugh’s teams are used to, the opponents have had something to do with that, as well. Still, his expectations for his team are to minimize errors and capitalize on opportunities.
“Once you go back and look at the mistakes, a ton of those are self-inflicted,” Baugh said. “You have one that’s self-inflicted, with a penalty or a blown assignment, and then the next one, they make a big play. Well, you’re not going to move in football. So we’ve got to get all of that stuff ironed out and make sure that we’re making improvements on those things, and that’s what we talk to the kids about.”
Catholic, Baugh said, looks much like the team Ruston played in 2020. He said the Bears’ playoff loss to Karr last season was the Cougars’ closest game of the year.
Baugh said the challenge starts with sorting out what Catholic is showing before the snap.
“They’re very multiple on offense. They use a lot of different personnel groupings, and then they shuffle them formationally a lot of different ways,” Baugh said. “You have to be on top of your game as far as recognizing jersey numbers, because they’ll jump a tight end around. It’ll look like he may be in an offensive line position. They’ll flip a bunch of receivers over to a side, some eligible, some not.”
That puts the burden on the Ruston defense to get the front, the coverage and the eligible receivers right on every snap.
“And then you throw all those good players out there that they’ve got, and that makes it really difficult,” Baugh said. “I’ve been really impressed with their running back. He’s really, really good with the ball in his hands. The quarterback operates everything and gets the ball to the right people, and their receivers can catch it, run with it and score at any point.”
Baugh said the Bears are just as sound on the other side of the ball.
“They do a good job of picking and choosing when they’re going to bring some pressure on you,” Baugh said. “You can tell they’re really well coached and know what they’re doing.”
Ruston will likely be without junior running back Dalen Powell, who ran for 119 yards and both Ruston touchdowns against Karr.
“It’s been a day-to-day deal. It’s progressively gotten better, but I don’t think he’s going to be well enough to see any action on Friday,” Baugh said. “It’s just too fast out of the gate. I think he’d love to play. He’s tried to work his way into that. But I just don’t think it’s been enough time.”
The Saturday game in New Orleans cost the Bearcats their normal weekend routine. Ruston brought its players back Sunday afternoon to handle what it usually does on Saturday and get back on schedule for the week.
The squeeze comes again next week, when Ruston plays on Thursday and loses a practice day. Tuesday is usually the Bearcats’ longest and most physical practice, and Wednesday runs back through the same work at a faster pace with fewer reps.
“We’ll lose a day of practice going into the game on Thursday, which means you really have to be on top of your game whenever you do your install on Monday,” Baugh said. “Usually we try to keep things as simple as we can, game-plan wise, going into a short week like that, because you don’t have another day.”
Losing Wednesday, Baugh said, means losing the chance to clean up Tuesday’s mistakes.
“It’s a big day for making sure that we’re ironed out on everything we messed up on Tuesday, and you just lose that opportunity to get that straight,” Baugh said. “That’s why we’ll stay pretty basic as to the things we’ve already been doing, and hopefully the kids have retained a bunch of that going into the short week.”
