“This has been a big rivalry over the years and it’s always a tough game,” said Carter. “But we’re looking at this game and hoping to use it as a really big boost in our drive to make the playoffs. That’s what we’ve been saying to our players all week and they know how important this one is to our playoff chances.”
Every game for Gilbert this season takes on a greater emphasis in terms of the Lions 2009 playoff hopes due to the fact that the team only has a nine game schedule. Typically a team needs at least seven wins to make the playoffs. And right now, the Lions record stands at 3 wins against one defeat.
“We know that with our schedule we need all the wins we can get to make the playoffs and we’re trying as hard as we can to get them.” said Carter.
To beat Iaegar though, the Lions must have the same strong defensive performance that they displayed against the Wolfpack in last Friday’s King Coal Bowl. And that's a fact that Carter knows this all too well.
We played defense pretty well last week. We really gave up only one touchdown defensively,” stated the veteran coach. “That’s a change for us. Usually we give up a lot of points. Our kids played aggressively and did a better job of tackling. We turned Williamson in and made them run inside. We were just really ready defensively. We need to play like that on defense again this week.”
Carter’s plans for Iaegar are indeed painstaking.
“Iaegar runs the Wing T- offense and they have about 3 or 4 plays they run pretty good. They have ran the same offense for about fifteen years and that’s what they’re going to do.” said Carter. “We’ve got our own special defense we use for Iaegar and they’re really the only team we run it against. We try to keep their running backs from getting outside and make them run at us on the inside. That’s why it’s always a tough game when we play them.”
Carter said that what the Lions need is a better overall offensive performance against the Cubs than they did against the Wolfpack.
“We didn’t play very well and we just need a better overall performance,” Carter admitted. “We got penalties the other night because we got lazy and wasn’t getting into our blocks. We’ve talked about that a lot in practice this week and hopefully we’ll be able to do a better job of blocking. Last week we just did a sorry job.”
On the injury front, Carter said he had to play Josh Carter last week but wound up being forced to.
“Josh was and is still playing with a sore shoulder. But he and Ashton Cline are both about 95% this week. We won’t have Cameron Ellis back till the Burch game and we should be better when we get him back.”
Kickoff at Lowell Phipps Stadium is 7:30 Friday.
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