SportsZone Football Friday Game of the Week Preview: Troy Buchanan at Battle
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Battle has arrived at its final game before the team officially turns the page to the playoffs. For the first time this season, the Spartans will be seeking back-to-back wins when they welcome Troy Buchanan to their home stadium for their regular season finale.
The Trojans and Spartans are our SportsZone Football Friday Game of the Week. You can watch the game live over the air channel 17.3 on KZOU. Here is a look at other local listings:
- DirecTV - Channel 18
- Dish Network - Channel 32
- Mediacom - Channel 12 & 709
- Centurylink - Channel 12
- Spectrum - Channel 183
After starting the season with an 0-7 record, head coach Matthew Herman led his team to its first win of the season in Week 8. Battle outscored Jefferson City 20-0 in the fourth quarter last week to retake the lead in the final 12 minutes, scoring a trio of touchdowns on a 30-yard run from Tyler Mays, a 13-yard rush from Chris Brown and an interception return from Terrence Luther Jr. to capture that long-awaited first victory of the campaign. With some newfound momentum, Battle is striving to build on last week's win ahead of the start of the district tournament.
"The positivity of it is number one. We finished that game off, and we had our huddle at the end and before I even spoke, I had two guys speak up. One guy said, 'hey, let's build on this.' The other one said, 'don't be happy that we finally had success, we knew it was coming.' Those are big and mature things for our young men to say. Both those guys are juniors that said that, so that's something to build on with our team and our leadership," Herman said. "We talked before we went out on Tuesday, and we said, 'hey, great teams are defined by two things: how do you handle adversity and how do you handle success.' We know how we handle adversity. We've seen it plenty of times this year. Now, how do you handle success, and our guys responded well. We had a great practice. We were live, and we flew around to the football. Guys were making plays."
The Spartans have one more tough test ahead of them before playoff time. Battle will face Troy Buchanan, who has a flawless 8-0 record this season, in Week 9. The Trojans are averaging about 43 points per game and only allowing nearly 15 points per contest on the defensive side of the football. However, Troy Buchanan has only defeated one opponent this season with a record above the .500-mark, and Herman believes his team's challenging conference schedule has prepared them to face teams like the Trojans and be ready for the postseason.
"I think it prepares us extremely well for the playoffs. When you get that grind of Weeks 2-8 for us in our conference, it is exactly that. It is a grind. There's no soft games. There's not let-ups," Herman said. "I do think our conference is a little tougher, and [Troy Buchanan] is a great football team. They're as good as their record is. But, I question maybe have they played as good of teams as we have, but I think they're a great program that takes care of the football and plays football the right way."
Handing the Trojans their first loss of the season will be a challenging task, but Battle has some clear objectives for how they can achieve that feat.
"Number one is stopping the run. Stop their run game. They run counter extremely well, so we have to limit how well they run it, understand they may get a couple big plays but being able to rally to the football and limit the big explosive touchdowns and have great eyes in the secondary," Herman said. "Offensively, take care of the football. We have to. We had a great run game last week, and we've got to make sure we value the football and don't turn it over two times."
Kickoff for Battle's final regular season game of the season is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m.
