After clinching their first win over rival T.R. Miller and making the playoffs for the first time since 2007 Friday, the W.S. Neal Eagles will turn their attention to the Millry Wildcats for their final game of the regular season.
W.S. Neal heads into week 10 this week with a 7-2 overall record and finished their region play with a 5-2 record after their eight-point win over the Tigers of T.R. Miller.
“I think it was a good football game,” W.S. Neal head coach Doug Hoehn said of the Battle of Murder Creek game Friday night in Brewton. “I think both teams played really hard and both teams played with a lot of class. It was a physical football game. I watched from the sideline and saw both Miller kids helping Neal kids up off the ground and Neal kids helping Miller kids up off the ground. Of course we were happy to come away with the win. This was a big rival game and that is a big plus for us, but more importantly, it gets us in the playoffs. Anytime you can beat your rival, at their place with they are the No. 2 team in the state, I think it says a lot about where our program is going.”
Hoehn said he thought the win over Miller was a good measuring stick.
“To beat a team that is very well-coached and always has good athletes is good,” Hoehn said. “That is two of them for us this year in Miller and Bayside, so I think we are starting to move in the right direction. We are not there yet, but I think we are headed in the right direction. Our kids were more focused this past week and I was pleased the way we bounced back because we did not play well at all the week before. We had a lot on our minds and just think it was too much for our team to handle against Opp.”
Hoehn said the Miller week went smoother than the Opp week—something he gives credit to the school administration for.
“We were very focused and we were very focused during the Miller week last year,” Hoehn said. “I thank our administration for a good day on Friday. Our principal, Mrs. Patty Frazier and our assistant principal Todd Williamson did a really good job. They were organized in the time schedule and throughout the day and that really enabled our kids to stay focused. It was not to loose around here.”
Millry comes into the game with W.S. Neal with a 4-5 overall record after falling to Flomaton Friday night 34-13.
Millry started the season 2-0 before finishing 4-1 at the midpoint of the season. Since then, the Wildcats have gone 0-4 and finished 2-5 in region play.
W.S. Neal and Millry have never met before on the football field.
“If you look at Millry, you are looking at two different teams,” Hoehn said. “When we see film on them earlier, they are really good football team. Both their tailback and their fullback are better than the two we faced last week and those two were the best that we had seen all year. The last couple of weeks, those two kids have not been playing. I know they have had some injuries, but I don’t know the extent of those injuries.”
Hoehn said he does not know who is going to playing for Millry Friday night—and that makes things harder to prepare for this week in practice.
“When we are watching film on them, there are about six kids that we are trying to track that either are playing or they are not playing,” he said. “But when they are all playing, they are a very good football team. They have more athletes than we have. So we are just going to have to show up Friday and see who is playing for them. We are going to prepare either way, but they do things differently when certain kids are not playing than when they are playing. The struggle this week is we are going to have to prepare for two totally different offenses. We don’t know which one we are going to see.”
Game time is set for 7 p.m. in Millry.