Tigers not overlooking Saints
The Tigers (3-0, 2-0) will host a perennially-athletic Selma team Friday night in a key region contest.
“Selma’s record is not real strong. They’re 1-2. But we’re three games into the season and with the athletes they are playing with, they are very capable of beating anybody in the state of Alabama,” Demopolis head coach Tom Causey said of the Saints squad that will visit Tiger Stadium Thursday.
Causey’s team enters the contest fresh off a 41-14 drubbing of region foe Saraland and just one week away from a much-anticipated date with rival Thomasville.
With two major contests bookending the date with Selma, it would seem easy for the Tigers to overlook the Saints. However, Causey said he is not concerned with the prospect of his players taking Selma lightly, citing his team’s intensity in both preparation and in-game play as key indicators of its maturity.
“I thought we played hard. We’ve been harping on that, playing hard for 48 minutes. That’s what we did. I thought, Friday night, they came out and played extremely hard and didn’t let up. I thought our young guys when out and did the same thing. Our backups, when they got a chance to play, played just as hard,” Causey said. “That’s something we try to get back daily. We’ve got to understand that we can’t turn that on like a switch. It’s got to be done daily. Each week, regardless of who we’re playing, it has been about us. It has not been about our opponents. It’s about us getting better every week and understanding what our opponents are going to do or try to do.”
As the Tigers await kickoff against Selma, they know the skill players wearing white Friday night will be as fast as any team on the schedule all season.
“They are a strong football team, as talented of a football team as anybody we’ll play this year,” Causey said, noting that the 2012 Selma Saints remind him a great deal of the 2010 version that visited Demopolis and threatened the home team all the way to the final whistle in a 20-14 loss. “They have got skill kids at every position that can fly. They have a plan. They run to the football on defense. They’re huge on the fronts, offensive and defensive line. And when they put a body on a body, they’re really good. They are a very dangerous team. I think they’ve made some mistakes against good football teams that have cost them games. But their speed is unreal.”
Causey also expressed his hope that Demopolis fans will arrive early and show their intensity throughout the contest.
“Our fans need to come out and pack the stadium out because they are going to see some Division I athletes for Selma,” Causey said. “It ought to be an interesting matchup for us.”