Livingston football is back in the win column after an absence of nearly one year. The team worked to come from behind in Anahuac to defeat the Panthers 61-50.
The Lions are working toward winning decisively and playing sound throughout. Yet, after nine consecutive losses, they are happy to study game film from any victory.
“Say what you want about learning from losses, but it's a lot easier to learn from wins, just because kids have a little hint of success and want to get better at them,” Lion head coach Tucker Carter said. “We had a nice conversation today about wanting to continue to get better, that good teams are going to continue to get better all week.”
So, what was it, exactly, that changed? What took a team that lost 33-0 the week before, and trailed by 22 points near the end of the third quarter to a dominant showing of 33 unanswered points?
“I felt like we made some changes defensively to take away some space from their receivers, take away some access throws that they had early in the game,” Carter said. Offensively, we decided to try to lean on them and put some bigger personnel packages in there and run right at them. Late in the game, (we were) getting in some two-tight end, and really, three-tight end sets to be able to run the football.
“I felt like we did a good job of rotating those guys, because our offensive line, our guys were playing defensive line too. We did a little better job of putting them on play counts per series, so that they could be more fresh in the fourth quarter.”
Kirbyville will represent a step up in competition. They have already challenged two other teams from Livingston’s District 9-4A, falling short in both.
“They played Bridge City (35-12) and Lumberton (25-6), two very good teams in our district, who returned a lot from last year's teams and are physical and disciplined and well coached. That was kind of something to put on the kids' radar. You can't go into the game (thinking), ‘Oh, they're 0-2, they're not any good.’
“They're a good football team and it's not like they went in there and got blown out by either one of those teams. I reminded the kids that we got blown out by both of those teams. Once again, we're good enough to beat anybody. We're bad enough to get beat by anybody depending on how we execute that week.”
Carter said the Wildcats will operate a spread offense.
“They will play with a tight end at times, but the quarterback is a good athlete and throws it well enough to be effective. The running back is a really big kid that's a downhill bruiser and they've got several receivers that are pretty good in space. They try to do a good job with their splits on the offensive line to spread your defense out and create running lanes, so we've got to get aligned.
“The good thing about playing them is their offense is more similar, stylistically, to people we play in our district than the two that we just played. Hopefully, we can get lined up better and be physical and try to take away some of the things they do well and make them do other things.”
Expect the Kirbyville defense to play a 4-4, while working to avoid the explosive play. The coach was impressed with how they handled a bigger group like Lumberton that attacks with a power run game.
“Defensively, I feel like they're pretty physical in the box. They try to crowd the box, play with one high safety and make you go to the second and third level in the passing game to create some opportunities. The two stand-up defensive ends are good players. We feel like there's some things we'd like to attack in their defense early on.
“They've done a pretty good job of keeping things in front of them, not giving up big plays and making you snap it over and over, and march down the field. They bring some double inside pressures and they definitely don't just sit there and present one thing. They'll move around a little bit.”
