News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Following a loss to the Portland Panthers that dropped their record to 3-2, the Clay County Bulldogs travel north to Kentucky to take on the Monroe County Falcons.
Since Clay and Monroe are on the TN-KY border, head coach Bruce Lamb said the team is treating this week like any other away game. He said the Falcons 1-4 record is deceptive due to injuries and expects the best Monroe performance of the season on Friday.
“They are very athletic,” Lamb said. “They’ve got two kids that run really well and a quarterback, if he’s back this week, can throw it. So they’re very versatile in what they can do. Defensively they run a 4-4 and they look at you and they try to play the run and they get outside. Hopefully we can line up and take advantage of their miscues.”
The Bulldogs two losses came in a 17-14 week 2 match-up with Westmoreland and in last week’s 24-21 loss to Portland. With just six points separating Clay County from a perfect season, Lamb said it comes down to execution of the game plan.
“We just got to make sure we execute a little better towards the end,” Lamb said. “We played extremely hard the other night against a school that’s 5A with a hundred something players on their sidelines to our 28. And our kids played extremely hard, now we didn’t play perfect, we didn’t execute perfect. So, we just got to get better each week.”
Lamb said that midway through the season, the Bulldogs are relatively healthy besides ankle sprains to senior Eli Burnette and junior Bryson Sharp. With only 28 players on their roster and many guys playing a majority of all snaps during the game, Lamb described it as “iron man football”.
With just five guaranteed games left this season, Lamb said that his players understand what is at stake and are locked in on improving each day.
“There is a great attitude in the locker room,” Lamb said. “They are very competitive and want to win and they are going to do what it takes to win those games.”
