VALDOSTA —
Rance Gillespie was disappointed in the way his team played in a 28-24 loss to Brooks County last Friday night.
“We didn’t play well in any phase,” Valdosta’s football coach admitted on Tuesday.
The Wildcats have been busy the first two days of this week, working to fix mistakes and play better football than they did against Brooks.
When it was time for practice on Monday and Tuesday, the Valdosta players came to the practice field ready to work.
“We’ve had two good days,” Gillespie said. “Our kids are getting better and moving forward.
“Our kids have approached this week the way that you hoped they would. They’ve come out and put together a couple good days of practice, and have worked to get better and fix some of the things that happened to us on Friday. We’re excited about having the opportunity to get back out on the field and play another football game.”
Much of Gillespie’s frustration last Friday centered around the number of mistakes the Wildcats made. There was a dropped punt snap that gave Brooks the ball at the 2-foot line, a mistake that cost Valdosta seven points when Brooks quarterback Malcolm Parrish scored on the next play. Valdosta’s young secondary, which only has one starter back from last year, was burned for two 65-yard completions and a 33-yard pass; those three passes led to Brooks’ other three touchdowns. There was a bad snap that led to a blocked punt. Valdosta had a touchdown wiped out by a penalty, the fourth time that has happened in two games. And there were 13 penalties on the Wildcats for 120 yards, one week after the team was penalized 12 times for 132 yards in a 28-7 win over North Augusta.
“Obviously, we had some mistakes that we had to clean up in our special teams play, so we’ve been addressing those,” Gillespie said. “(There were) a lot of things with discipline, from a standpoint of being a more disciplined football team. That’s stuff we’re trying to address and clean up. Those are the biggest things that were pretty obvious to everybody that was there Friday.
“It hurts when you’ve got a little drive going, and then all of a sudden, it’s second-and-20 (after a penalty). We’re trying to clean some of that stuff up. ... I think most of the stuff that you saw was mistakes that are very fixable, and things that we’ll get corrected.”
At this point, Gillespie says, the Wildcats have put Brooks County behind them, and are now focusing on this week’s game. Valdosta will try to bounce back this Friday against Crisp County.
“You’ve got to move on. You can’t let that set you back too long, because with this schedule, you’ve got to turn around and be ready to play again,” Gillespie said.
Gillespie has spent the past three days trying to get his team ready for an 0-2 Crisp County team that he says “is a lot more talented than their record indicates.”
In particular, he is trying to prepare his offense to face a Crisp defense that loves to blitz out of a 3-3 defensive front.
“They are a good, solid defensive football team,” he said. “They (blitz) from everywhere.”
Valdosta’s coach thinks his team’s offensive players, particularly the blockers and quarterback Shelby Wilkes, will be ready to face the Cougars’ different blitz packages on Friday.
“We’ve had a couple of good days preparing for it. Our kids have grasped our concepts as they applied to (facing the blitz),” Gillespie said. “We knew we were going to see some 3-3 stuff throughout this year, with (Crisp) and Camden and Coffee being 3-3 football teams. We started looking at some (3-3) defenses early on in the summer. So this is not the first time they’ve been hit with it. They’ve repped against it a little bit, and that’s made the transition a little easier.”
As usual, kickoff at Cleveland Field at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium comes at 8 p.m. on Friday.
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Related Photos
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Valdosta’s Nelson Herring (13) runs the ball during the Wildcats’ game against Brooks County last Friday. Paul Leavy | Special to the Times
Discussion
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