Last week the North Montgomery suffered it’s first loss of the season in a physical, tough 14-12 county defeat against rival Southmont. Charger coach Josh Thompson noted how the mental mistakes and miscues were costly in the loss. This week the Chargers look to rebound as they will welcome Sagamore Conference foe Lebanon to North Montgomery.
The Tigers who come into the game against the Chargers with a 1-2 record, were narrowly defeated by a single point last week in their SAC opener against Danville in a 14-13 loss.
This week in practice for the Chargers ‘focus’ has been the term that they’ve used to prepare for what will be a test against the Tigers at home.
“That’s really where we’ve really put our emphasis this week is on focusing and taking care of what we can do to get better,” Thompson said. “In that way we’re cleaning up those little mistakes that we made last week and we’re using our focus to do just that.”
While no county team want’s to suffer a loss against another, this week is a new week and that means a new opponent to prepare for. Thompson knows that he and his team can’t change what happened a week ago and are moving on to prepare for Lebanon.
“Our kids have done a good job of just focusing on preparing for Friday night,” Thompson said. “They quickly shifted their focus to preparing for Lebanon and that’s what we’ve preached to them. We watched the film on Saturday morning and learned from our mistakes and moved on.”
For the Tigers they’re led out on offense by senior quarterback Landon Fouts. Fouts in the first three games has complete 41 of his 76 pass attempts (54%) while throwing for 478 yards. He does have four interceptions, three of which came last week against the Warriors. The Tigers have the sophomore receiver duo of Kaden Lark (14 catches 174 yards), and Jackson Folden (10 catches 127 yards) as their primary pass catchers.
On the ground Sophomore Brendan Shockley leads the Tigers with 101 yards on 40 carries.
“They’re going to have success throwing it,” Thompson said of the Tigers. “For us we’re going to have to try and get pressure on their quarterback while maintaining good coverage down field. At the same time, we have to do a good job at stopping the run. I feel like and so do our kids that we can compete with any team on our schedule so we’re going to show up and do what we can do to compete well. When we are firing on all cylinders we’re a very good football team.”
The Charger defense has been stout in its firs three games allowing just 28 total points (9.33 per game) and it will be put to the test against the Tigers.
North Montgomery and Lebanon are set for a 7 pm kickoff and you can catch live coverage of the game on True Country 106.3 WCDQ beginning at 6:30 with Bob Cox and Billy Rubenstein.
