'It's about to get real'

“It’s about to get real,” Batesville Pioneer’s head football coach Dave King said. “I believe we still have some of our best football to play, but to do that against these good teams it is going to take a positive attitude.”

In 26 years of coaching the Pioneers, King has had teams start the season 1-2 or 0-3 and still make the playoffs.

“We are pretty young and we are playing pretty good competition,” King said. “The two things we have to get back is playing our physical brand of football and the other is our confidence factor. Football is a funny game to play and to play it well, you have to have a certain confidence level. We have great kids who come to work every day and they are a lot better than they give themselves credit for. They just need a confidence boost. The script has been flipped on us and it’s disappointing, but at the end of the day, this game teaches you to get up off the ground and rally up. This is big starting conference on the road.”

The Nettleton Raiders are 3-0 on the season and are coming off a bye week after defeating Mountain Home 28-21 the week before. Cameron Scarlett quarterbacks the Raiders offense and Jordan Pigram anchors the defense.

“They are obviously a good team,” King said. “They are huge on the offensive and defensive lines and their quarterback can run and throw well. He is a three-year starter for them and is one of the top quarterbacks in the conference. Defensively, they are very physical and quick off the ball. “

It will be a challenge in the trenches. For Batesville defense, King thinks they are improving with every play.

“Our defense is playing pretty well, but we have to eliminate the big play that has kind of been our Achilles heel,” King said. “We are probably not as fast as we have been in recent years in the secondary and we have given up some big plays.”

However, starters like Sam Gates, Jack Lanier, Dayshaun Brown and Garyson Berdeja have been leading the Pioneers attack.

“All four of them have shown great leadership,” King said.”They are all returning starters and are playing well.”

The coach also singled out linebacker Adrian Gutierrez for his efforts.

“He is coming on as a linebacker for us,” King added. “On the offensive side, we have to get some continuity. The week we played Searcy, we had over 400 yards of offense and scored 36 points. We would have probably scored 50 if we hadn’t fumbled four times. Jay Storlie did a great job against them and did a great job running the offense. So, it was really disappointing Friday night.”

Batesville’s offense sputtered against Mountain Home in a 35-7 loss.

“We have to give it them, our hats are off to Mountain Home,” King said. “They were a lot more physical than us and we aren’t used to seeing that. We are usually the more physical and we have to get back to our brand of football of being the most physical.”

The Bombers led 14-0 after the first quarter and defensively, limited Batesville to only two first downs in the first half.

“I don’t think our defense played that poorly, it was our offense and our inability to do anything on the ground,” King said. “That was really the tale of the game. They dominated us up front and took it to us.”

Three-and-out was the early theme for Batesville on Friday, but it was a solid defensive effort that kept the Pioneers within striking distance only down 21-0 at halftime.

In the third quarter, the Batesville defense intercepted a Mountain Home pass to stop a potential score and recovered a fumble. As the fourth quarter opened, Storlie directed the Pioneers to the Bomber’s 12-yardline and passed to running back Keaton Douglas for a touchdown to make it 21-7.

“As the game went, at that point we were down two touchdowns and felt fortunate,” King said. “We just need to get better.”

Mountain Home scored on a five-yard run to go up 28-7, then scored again with less than a minute to play to account for the final score.

“We have been down this road before,” King said.”We are a very young team with nine underclassmen playing on the offensive side. Sometimes growing pains are painful. We just have to control the things that we can control, which is in our effort and attitude. Hopefully, it will continue to get better and we can start to see some progress.