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: NIsportsTigers eye home playoff game
Published: November 6, 2009
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With a win over 1-8 Milton tonight, Southern Columbia will likely lock up a home playoff game next week against Bloomsburg, one of the four teams that own wins over the Tigers this season, so it shouldn't be too hard to get the Tigers up for the Black Panthers.
But still, Milton is 1-8.
Southern coach Jim Roth hasn't coached for 26 years and won 302 games without knowing a thing or two about getting a team prepared for games that seem to have boring written all over them, though.
"What we normally try to do when we're playing a team that's not having a great year is to pick out a phase or area of their game that we need to focus on or improve upon," Roth said. "Since it looks like we might be playing Bloomsburg next week, I'd like to see us concentrate a little on their passing game, because we'll need to do a great job on that next week. We use something to keep the kids a bit focused. Plus the way the points look, it looks like we might get a home game next week if we win. The way we've been playing lately, we've been getting some momentum, and I would hope we're hungry to go out and take advantage of that."
Although Milton has legitimately struggled most of the season, the Black Panthers do have a solid offensive scheme, according to Roth.
"They've moved the ball on most of the teams they've played," Roth said. "They have a pretty nice offense. The scheme that they run is a little difficult to defend, too. They run spread stuff, and throw the ball around some."
Quarterback Colton Murray is a veteran, and although he has thrown for just 299 yards, he has mixed in six touchdown passes, and he is a solid running threat, with 460 yards rushing and three scores. Rob Turnbaugh has added 371 yards and Don English a couple of touchdowns on the ground.
"I equate the problems Milton's been having recently with Shikellamy," said Roth. "There, they just weren't getting some of the best athletes. At Shikellamy, kids coming up through the system playing two or three sports, and by the time they got to high school, they weren't playing football any more. That's how a program can really get down down, and then it just takes time to recover.
"Then, it becomes the question of what do you need first, the talent, or enough wins to get some of the talent to come out."
Roth was pleased after last week's 31-20 win over Mount Carmel that the Tigers were able to run the ball in the fourth quarter against a defense stacked to stop it. Sophomore running back Tyrell Thomas has come into his own in recent weeks, with games of 78, 175 and 154 yards while averaging 9.7 yards per carry.
Roth attriubutes the uptick in performance as much to all of the backs finally getting on the same page with their blocking schemes.
"A lot of it has to with the backs in general," he said. "A lot of our inconsistency earlier this season came from their overall play, and part of that is the blocking part by the backs in our scheme, and it's often lost to the average fan. They've gotten better at that part of it and it's just helped our consistency overall with our offense."
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