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September 3, 2008

Bearkats making best of bye week, trying to stay focused on Prairie View

By Cody Stark The Huntsville Item Wed Sep 03, 2008, 09:52 PM CDT

If Sam Houston State was playing Prairie View A&M; on Saturday instead of next week, the Bearkats would be the first to say they aren’t ready.

Maybe it was how easily the 58-14 season-opening victory over East Central Oklahoma came or the fact that this is a bye week, but the effort has been lacking in practice this week.

And the Sam Houston coaches let the players know about it following Wednesday afternoon’s practice at Bowers Stadium.

“It’s been a rough week,” junior wide receiver Chris Lucas said. “We came out sloppy on Monday and picked it up a little today and Tuesday, but the coaches still feel like we can practice harder. That’s what we have to do in order to get better and not just take the week off.”

This is a tough week for the Bearkats to get the first bye in their schedule. Sam Houston was impressive in its debut on both sides of the ball.

The first-string offense put 52 points on the board in the first half against the Division II Tigers, scoring on all eight possessions. The Bearkats gained 474 yards of total offense, had one turnover (a fumble in the fourth quarter) and only punted four times, all coming in the second half when SHSU was mainly handing off the ball to keep the clock running.

Defensively, the Kats didn’t allow a score until midway through the third quarter. Sam Houston also forced five defensive turnovers (three fumbles and two interceptions) and recorded three sacks.

“Anytime you have a bye week, as an athlete, it’s hard to get mentally prepared,” senior linebacker Derrick Raymer said. “This week we really haven’t had a great practice. After getting that first game out of the way, it is almost like going back to camp since we aren’t playing this week.

“When you can really prepare for a game, your mind-set is different when you have something to look forward to. We just need to get in the mind-set that we have a game every week and bring our best effort in practice.”

The Bearkats haven’t had much to work on this week as far as preparing for the game against Prairie View on Sept. 13 at Bowers Stadium. Sam Houston has seen some tape of the Panthers’ 34-14 victory over Texas Southern this past Saturday.

After another practice today, Sam Houston will take a couple of days off then hit the field again Sunday to get down to business, hopefully with a little more information on the Panthers following their game against Texas College on Saturday.

But right now, all the Bearkats are concentrated on is the areas they need to improve despite how well they played last week.

“We need to be more focused but it hasn’t been horrible,” head coach Todd Whitten said. “The next bye week we will probably get more out of it.

“We are just trying to get better. We need to clean up some of the things in the kicking game. We had a bad penalty and had a bad play with a turnover in the kicking game. Other than that, I liked what I saw out of our starters and was glad we got some of those backups a chance to play.”

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