Basile Bearcats, St. Ed’s Blue Jays renew heated rivalry to seize early district lead

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By: TRACEY
JAGNEAUX
Sports Editor

BASILE -- The rivalry continues Friday night as the Basile Bearcats host the St. Ed’s Blue Jays in one of the most anticipated games of the year for both fan bases.
Basile enters the game with an overall record of 2-1 after a physical 13-6 win over the Sacred Heart Trojans last week. St. Ed’s also sits at 2-1, with blistering wins over Hanson and Mamou. Their only loss comes at the hands of the Trojans in week two.
Even with the added pressure of a rivalry game, Basile head coach Kevin Bertrand is trying to get his veteran ball club to focus on another very important aspect of this game; it is the first district game of the year for both clubs.
“We can’t think about the rivalry part of the game,” stated Bertrand. “Instead we have to see it as being 1-0 in district and getting off to a good start in the league. We cannot get caught up in the emotions of the game, because if we do, bad things can happen.”
St. Ed’s brings with them a veteran club that have huge experience in the offense that they run. Leading the charge on that side of the ball is quarterback Brad Miller.
The senior signal caller has averaged 85.8 yards per game running the ball and has four touchdowns on the year. However, Bertrand knows that his team cannot focus solely on Miller.
“Miller is a obviously a threat and the offense goes through him,” said Bertrand. “But, we can’t fall asleep on the rest of their players. They have the talent to hurt you if you do not carry out your assignments on defense.”
There were two huge areas of concern for the Bearcats after the Sacred Heart game this past Friday. One was the number of penalties committed by Basile and the other was the breakdown on special teams that led to three blocked kicks.
Bertrand did address those two areas at halftime of that game, but has talked about those miscues a little more emphatically this past week at practice.
“We’ve stressed all week long that we cannot give good teams free yards when we commit stupid penalties,” commented Bertrand. “If we continue to do that, we won’t be in the thick of things come the end of the season. From now on, the games get bigger and bigger for us.”
“As far as the breakdowns on special teams, we went back and looked at the film and found out our area of weakness,” Bertrand continued. “I think we have been able to fix that at practice. It was actually something that gave us problems in week one.”
Offensively, Bertrand is hoping to return to a more balance attack. In the win over Sacred Heart, the Bearcats carried the ball 32 times for 228 yards, but was only seven for 12 for 74 yards through the air.
“We have been a little banged up on offense, but we are working to get guys back,” said Bertrand. “But, that is not an excuse. Last week we were kind of one-dimensional as compared to the two previous weeks. We are going to need to get the passing game going not only for tomorrow night, but for the rest of the season.”