By Kyle Roberts
PINEVILLE, La. — It’s the final road test of the regular season for the Ruston High Bearcats (6-2, 2-1 District 2-5A) tonight as they travel to CenLA to take on the Pineville Rebels (4-4, 0-3 District 2-5A) in a district matchup.
For ‘Cats head coach Jerrod Baugh, the measure of his team’s success this evening will be more than what shows up on the final scoreboard.
“I’ve been telling the kids — we try to disregard who our opponent is,” Baugh said. “There are things we need to work on and get better at, and we have goals other than necessarily just beating whoever the other team is, and this is no different. We need to play well on offense, and that doesn’t mean scoring the ball every time. It means being productive with it: making a big drive, being able to punt on the other end and not turning it over.
“Defensively, we don’t need to give up chunk plays, and if we get put on the short end of the field, we need to hold somebody to a field goal. We need to be consistently doing that especially going into the last week of the season next week and then the playoffs.”
Ruston is coming off of a home loss last week to Alexandria Senior High 45-28 to drop the first district contest of the season. The Bearcats led 21-3 before ASH outscored Ruston 42-7 for the rest of the night. The Bearcats will now face a team that has not won a district game in well over a decade, and the coaches want to make sure the team is focused on the game at hand and not the one coming up at home next week against West Monroe.
“There’s no way to cut that with the kids, and I don’t lie to them,” Baugh said. “If we go out and play like we should, we should win the ball game (tonight). We may not play well and still win, but that’s not what our goal is. Our goals are bigger than that — every week, really. We want to improve during the game and be as good of a team as we can be by the time Week 10 is over.”
Pineville’s best weapon is senior tailback Ayden Tate, and Baugh expects the Rebels’ offense to revolve around him.
“He’s a really, really good player,” Baugh said. “I think they’ve been diligent about trying to make sure they can get him the ball out in space. And when he gets it, he’s dangerous and can get the ball scored. We just have to do a good job being where we’re supposed to be and executing the things we’re supposed to execute.”
The Rebels won four of their non-district matchups and started the season 2-0. Last week, Pineville lost to the West Monroe Rebels at home 49-17.
Ruston sophomore tailback Dalen Powell was injured near the end of the Alexandria game last week and will sit out tonight as a precaution.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. tonight. The game will be streamed on BearcatNationNetwork.com and broadcast on Q94.1FM locally.
