Sectional opening round preview this week for Culver

Story courtesy of The Pilot News.

CULVER — Culver coach Austin Foust has the unenviable task of preparing his team for the same opponent two weeks in a row. That is hard enough twice in a season but in back-to-back weeks is a special problem.
“I’m not sure if there is a right way to handle back-to-back playing the same opponent but we are going to go after it like this is week nine, they don’t have a conference win and we don’t have a conference win,” said Foust. “We want to finish the season with a conference win and we’ll handle next week the way you handle a do-or-die situation.”
Making the task a little more interesting is that this is fall break for Culver Schools and the focus may not be on football.
“They are 14-18-year-old kids and you want them to enjoy a break from school which is what they see more than a football game,” said Foust. “We gave them Monday off and traditionally we’ve (practiced) Tuesday and Wednesday in the morning. We went a little longer on Tuesday so we could get some film and classroom time in.”
“For the most part, we’ve kept them getting up early and not sleeping late and then they have the rest of the day to do what they want,” he said. “There are a lot of other things they can be doing we’ve tried to keep approaching what our opportunity is this week and what we can accomplish against South Central. We can’t take anything for granted. I feel like we’ve had good energy this week.”
In the last few weeks scoring hasn’t been a problem.
“We are scoring the ball,” said Foust. “We feel like we have a good quarterback in Jonas (McCuen). If we give him some time he has good arm talent and we’ve got a couple of receivers in David Hite and Caleb McCuen and feel like Tony Sommers and Braylon Jackson have the ability with their speed to hurt defenses.”
“We are just giving up big plays,” said Foust of his defense. “We just relax or don’t read our keys. That’s what we have to do this week is eliminate the big plays.”
This week they will face the air attack of the Satellites.
“They do a good job of seeing what you are in coverage-wise and then running the right routes and getting the ball out quick on you and let their guys get the yards after the catch,” said Foust. “We have to take the run away and get some pressure on the quarterback, but not too many teams have been able to do that because they do a good job getting it out quickly.”
“We want to just come right at them. We want to try to use our speed on the edge and hopefully, we have an advantage at that.”