After starting their season off 0-2 for the first time since 1989, the T.R. Miller Tigers picked up their first win of the season this past Friday night at home against the Excel Panthers, winning 64-7.

Not only was the win the first of the 2010 season, but it was also the team’s 600th win overall making them the first team in the state of Alabama, regardless of classification, to accomplish the feat.

“Well it was nice to win,” T.R. Miller Tiger head coach Jamie Riggs said. “I was pleased more with our response coming out in the third quarter. I thought we picked the intensity up a little bit and I was please about that because I was not pleased with the last few plays of the second quarter where it seemed every time we picked up yardage, we got a penalty. We have to eliminate some of that and we did that in the third quarter. In all aspects of the game, I thought we did some things better.”

With the win, the Tigers improved to 1-2 overall for the regular season and to 1-1 in region play. Overall, T.R. Miller improved to 600-286-20 in the 906 total games played.

T.R. Miller started playing football in 1926, 45 years, ago. Enterprise follows T.R. Miller with 599 wins and Colbert County with 598.

This week, the Tigers will welcome the Montgomery Academy Eagles to Brewton for their second straight home game.

Montgomery Academy enters week four’s game against T.R. Miller with a 0-3 record losing 50-0 to Bayside Academy Friday night at home.

“They are a real young team,” Riggs said of Montgomery Academy. “They have a lot of freshman and sophomores playing and they are trying to get some experience with those guys. That has been their difficulty because they have played hard. They have 13 juniors and seniors on their team (36 total players with eight sophomores and 15 freshmen).”

Riggs said you are supposed to learn to play the young guys on the B-team and practice and work your way to playing on varsity on Friday nights.

“That is the way most players do that,” Riggs said. “When you are young, you are having to learn that stuff on the practice field and then play on Friday nights before you are ready to do that. We had to do that a couple years ago with some of these guys who are seniors now, so it does help with your future. They understand right now they are a work in progress and their good teams are coming.”

Riggs said he has great respect for MA and they have always impressed him with how hard they have played every time he has watched them play.

“We have played them one time, in the semifinal of 2002, and it was a terrific game,” Riggs said. “We went up there and barely won the game (14-12) so I have great respect for them. Going into the game, we have to understand they are a young team and go in there and execute and put ourselves in a position to win the game. Hopefully we will see some improvement from last week. Also, we will try and emphasize to the players that it is not so much of who we are playing, it is really about what we are doing. We have to do what we are doing and do it well and if we do that, we will have a chance to win most of these games.”

For the Tigers, after Kevin Davis stepped in for an injured Wil Riggs Friday night at quarterback, Davis broke his wrist in the first quarter against Excel Friday night Riggs said.

“So as of right now (Monday) we do not know what our quarterback situation is,” Riggs said. “Wil will be revaluated (Tuesday) and we certainly have Conner Denton who played backup last year so he is an option if Wil can’t play. We have Keion Smith to help back him up so we are OK. We are lucky to have a guy like Conner who has taken a lot of reps and took a lot last week and done a lot down the years and played in B-team games and some in varsity. So he is fully capable for us and will do a good job. We will get him prepared for this week if he is needed. He will do fine.”

Game time is set for 7 p.m. at Brewton Municipal Stadium.