This week has a city-county matchup that sees Catholic and Owensboro face off as the Aces look to continue their win streak against their rivals. Apollo and Daviess County look to add a win to their records as they go on the road for week four. While the Red Devils host rivals Catholic, Apollo will travel to Bowling Green and Daviess will travel to North Hardin.
Owensboro Catholic, 3-0 (Class 2A, District 2
at Owensboro, 1-2 (Class 5A, District 1)
Highlights
Both rivals will look to continue their winning forms from last week. Owensboro is coming off of their first win of the season after their victory against Daviess County last week. The Red Devils will look to continue this momentum, but have Owensboro Catholic standing in their way. The Aces sit undefeated and only allowed 19 points scored against them across three games.
Last Week
Owensboro Catholic: Won 43-13 against Greenwood
Owensboro: Won 50-7 against Daviess County
Coaches’ thoughts
Owensboro Catholic head coach Jason Morris: We’re expecting it to be a really hard fought game. Obviously the rivalry speaks for itself. We’re expecting Owensboro to come in with a chip on their shoulder after losing to us last year, so we’re expecting a really good game.
Owensboro is very strong on the offensive and defensive lines and they have very good running backs. We’re gonna have to do a good job of protecting our quarterback on offense, and defensively we’re gonna have to look for them to run the ball and get that stopped first. In all three of our games there’ve been plenty of mistakes we’ve had to go back and try to correct. We’re just gonna continue to go week by week trying to get less of those mistakes and continue to get better within our conditioning. Hopefully we won’t have players cramping up and those kinds of things. Overall we’re just looking to keep executing and win the turnover battle.
Owensboro head coach Jay Fallin: There’s no doubt our first win gave us a confidence boost. We felt like we had a great opportunity to win if we played well. We did some good things and still have plenty to work on but it definitely helped with confidence.
Catholic is very good at receiver and quarterback. Brady is able to make a lot of different throws in a lot of different parts of the field. His receivers are very talented, so we’ll have to really do a nice job of coverage. Communication and getting lined up is part of what we have to be able to do to be successful on the defensive secondary. We’re just gonna have to execute and not make mistakes. In both of our losses we’ve shot ourselves in the foot with a number of preventable mistakes and we need to clean that up.
Apollo, 0-3 (Class 5A, District 1)
at Bowling Green, 1-2 (Class 5A, District 2)
Highlights
Apollo looks to put their first win on their record after having a rough start to the season. The Eagles have a tough opponent in the Purples as they only narrowly lost in their two defeats in the season. Apollo is going to have to play tight defense to stop the well rounded Purples .
Last week
Apollo: Lost 19-45 against Meade
Bowling Green: Lost 35-38 against Bryan Station
Coach’s thoughts
Apollo head coach John Edge: When we cut back on penalties and silly mistakes that have lost us some games it’ll give us a chance to win. Bowling Green does everything well. They’re a very good football team as always. They’re well-coached and have a championship program that continues to dominate. We got to play mistake-free. If we play mistake-free and make some plays offensively the kids will be more confident.
Daviess County, 0-3 (Class 6A, District 1)
at North Hardin, 0-2 (Class 6A, District 2)
Highlights
Both teams will be fighting for their first win tonight. Owensboro have a steep hill to climb to get into their desired form after only scoring seven points across three games. The Trojans passing game will be the main challenge to overcome if they are to finally get a win on the record. Specifically they will have to find a way to shut down star receiver Shaun Boykins who has made multiple big plays for the Trojans so far this season.
Last week
Daviess County: Lost 7-50 against Owensboro
North Hardin: Lost 21-49
Coach’s thoughts
Daviess County head coach Matt Brannon: Our focus is going to be on small victories and getting better each day. I liked that we were more competitive last week against Owensboro. We were at least in the fight at the end of the first half. We had some young kids that really responded and had some overall positive things that we could build on. North Hardin is a fantastic offensive team, and I think we have a good game plan for them. We’re challenging some players by having them in different positions just to try and match up against their athleticism. Hopefully we’ll see them execute the game plan. Offensively we’re still trying to get Basham more involved. Russ is doing a good job running our option, but we’ve gotta have some explosive plays.
They’ve got Shaun Boykins who is one of if not the top offensive player in Kentucky. They’ll try to get the ball into his hands. He has several 50+ yard touchdown runs against highly skilled opponents, so we’ll have to know where he is at all times. Defensively they create some opportunities we can take advantage of. They try to overcome with athleticism, so hopefully we dial up some of those plays and get some momentum early. We want to limit personal mistakes as we focus day-to-day on getting better.
