Sikeston looking for another gauge against NMCC

sports@standard-democrat.com

NEW MADRID -- The Sikeston Bulldogs entered the 2014 season with plenty of question marks.

Despite a 66-20 drubbing over rival Charleston in the season opener last Friday, head coach Kent Gibbs still isn't sure what kind of team he has.

He hopes to get a better idea tomorrow when his team travels south to play New Madrid County Central at 7 p.m.

Due to the lopsided score against Charleston, Gibbs had already pulled his starters before the first quarter was even over as the Bulldogs racked up a modern day state record 50 points in the opening quarter.

With such a short night for his regulars, Gibbs still wonders how his team will respond to a full contest.

"With our first team guys we really didn't play a whole lot," he said. "We're kind of treating this as if it's our opener and thinking it's going to be a four-quarter ballgame."

The Bulldogs will be playing an NMCC team that is in transition under new head coach John Dryden, who was hired in January to replace long-time head coach Arlen Pixley.

New Madrid County Central's Willie Jimerson evades a tackle from a Malden defender Friday at Malden High School. (Brent Shipman photo)

New Madrid County Central's Willie Jimerson evades a tackle from a Malden defender Friday at Malden High School. (Brent Shipman photo)

Dryden will be attempting to turn around an Eagles program that has had four straight losing seasons, going just 10-30 during that stretch.

The Eagles lost 54-26 in its season opener last Friday to Class 2 state-ranked Malden, in which the Green Wave limited NMCC to 89 yards of total offense.

Dryden will try to achieve his first win against a Sikeston program that has claimed five straight wins over NMCC by an average score of 36 to 6, including winning 17 of the 26 all-time games between the two schools.

"You're talking about a well-coached, very athletic team," Dryden said of Sikeston. "They do what they do very well. We're in a brand new system trying to get everything in place. We're going to have to play a pretty darn good football game to compete with them."

The Eagles' struggles on offense last Friday were compounded by five turnovers, including four fumbles. It led to a 40-6 deficit that was simply too much to overcome against a talented Green Wave squad.

"We made a lot of simple mistakes," Dryden said. "Just repetition and experience and we should be able to take care of that over time. Malden was definitely stronger than us up front and across the board. They've done a great job of developing their kids. The weight room will take some time to catch up to the other schools. But our learning curve is very high. We've only been in our system for a few weeks. Malden and Sikeston have been in their system for years."

The Eagles' offense is directed by senior quarterback J.C. Dryden, the son of the head coach. Dryden completed 7 of 19 passes for 80 yards with an interception and a touchdown, a 19-yard pass to senior receiver Willie Jimerson.

Dryden's top target last week was 6-foot-4 senior receiver Asten Newsom with three catches for 72 yards.

Mikeal Walker led in rushing with five carries for 34 yards while Malik Stevenson added four carries for 21 yards. Although the Eagles finished with just nine yards rushing as a team due to negative yards on fumbles and bad snaps.

"They're running an option-based offense -- three-back sets and some misdirection stuff in the option game," Gibbs said. "Their athleticism is better than what it's been the last couple of years. The big key is you've got to be able to tackle those guys and not let them get behind you because, frankly, they've got a couple of them that if they get behind us they're going to out-run us. I think that's going to be big to contain those guys and stop them before they get started. We've got to control those situations with our defensive line."

NMCC did have some bright spots in its kick return game, accumulating 301 return yards with Stevenson and Jimerson each returning kicks for touchdowns.

"I think anytime somebody returns two kicks against a good football team like they did the other night you better put a little bit more attention to it and, you bet, we've already talked about it and discussed it," Gibbs said.

The Eagles' defense struggled against the Green Wave, surrendering 389 yards of offense and 18 first downs. While the Bulldogs put up 66 points against Charleston last week, the team only managed just 273 yards of offense due to a short field for much of the night as well as a defensive score and a special teams score.

Junior quarterback Nathan Hampton was pulled out of the game in the first quarter after attempting just two passes, one of which went for a 37-yard touchdown to senior receiver Corbyn Blissett.

Junior running back Earnest Fobbs led the ground game with 78 yards on three carries. Junior Victwon Riley and sophomore Justus Faulkner combined for five carries for 57 yards.

Gibbs said the Bulldog offensive line will need to be prepared for an aggressive, attacking NMCC defense that runs well.

"Defensively they're playing an odd front," Gibbs said. "They move a lot of people around. Their linebackers come quite a bit. They're really trying to contain on the edge and force people to the middle. Offensively we've got to create a new line of scrimmage and try to keep their linebackers from making plays on us because they blitz so much."

Dryden, who is new to the area after moving from Tennessee, has tried to familiarize himself with Sikeston by watching previous films of the Bulldogs against NMCC.

What he has witnessed has been a Bulldogs team that has been able to stop the NMCC offense the last two years, posting shutouts and limiting the Eagles to 102 yards of offense in the two games combined, including 25 total yards in last year's 29-0 win.

He hopes to change that tomorrow night.

"Keys to the game are turnovers," Dryden said. "We have to be able to protect the ball and get some takeaways from them. Not saying that's going to be an easy thing to do but it is important for us to win the turnover battle. Also first downs. The more first downs we get the more we keep their offense off the field with the scoring potential that they have. And we have to tackle in space and shut down big plays. That's one of the things that hurt us against Malden. We'd have them 3rd-and-long and give up a touchdown. We have to be able to get stops and force punts in those situations."

For Gibbs, he is hoping that his team can maintain the edge that they came into the Charleston game with.

"We want to be strong emotionally and be physically superior to people and to do that you've got to play with emotion and be ready to play from the first whistle on," Gibbs said. "I was real excited from the fact that we did come out emotional and we did come out ready to go and we took advantage of the mistakes they made. You just don't know how the game would've turned out had they not made all those mistakes early. Everything happened really, really quick, which is what we wanted to do on offense. Defensively we wanted to take advantage of their mistakes and you look up and the score was what it was. We were excited with the way we started."