Football to use open date to sharpen skills
9/10/2010 7:00:00 AM | Football
By Cody Stark
Huntsville Item Assistant Sports Editor
Sam Houston State head coach Willie Fritz and his staff have had plenty of time to review the game film from last weekend's 34-3 loss at Baylor.
While the Bearkats showed plenty of positive signs, there are still a lot of areas the team needs to work on in order to have a better outing when Sam Houston takes the field again at Western Illinois on Sept. 18.
"We have to start limiting our mistakes," Fritz said Thursday afternoon. "We have a young ballclub and sometimes young ballclubs are prone to make errors. We have to not be that way. We had eight penalties. That is about four too many, and four of those were presnap.
"I did see some good things, though. Some guys competed, but we have to amp up our level of effort. We also still have guys jockeying for position on the depth chart and good teams have that."
The Bearkats might have made it more of a game and put a little scare into the Bears had the offense not sputtered last Saturday.
Sam Houston gained only 195 yards of total offense and left some points on the field with a pair of missed field goals and a fumble at the Baylor 31-yard line on first and 10.
"We need to take some more shots downfield and make some big plays," Fritz said. "We didn't take as many shots downfield and one of the reasons for that was not holding up our protection. We came close to breaking some runs and breaking some pass plays.
"I thought we did a good job with time of possession and only turning the ball over one time in our first ballgame, but that is one time too many and time of possession means nothing if you are not putting the ball in the end zone."
The Bearkats have a bye this week and have mostly been working on conditioning drills. The team will take a couple of days off, then hit the field full steam Monday to get ready for the Leathernecks.
Western Illinois won a 35-28 shoot out at Bowers Stadium last season as the Leathernecks threw for 437 yards.
"We have been using this week to get crisper and sharper in some of the areas we have been making mistakes in," the coach added. "Hopefully that will pay of for us. I told the kids that we were going to be fresh and frisky next Saturday.
"We are going to take a look at film of Western Illinois from last year and we expect they are going to do a lot of similar things."
Sam Houston opens its home schedule on Saturday Sept. 25 with Bearkat Family Weekend against Gardner-Webb. Special events during the evening include an appearance by the Houston Texans cheerleaders, a salute to Hillcrest Heroes honoring local veterans and police and fire department emergency service personnel, a huge pregame tailgate and a postgame fireworks display.
Other home games will be Oct. 16 (Homecoming) vs. Southeastern Louisiana, Nov. 6 vs. McNeese State and Nov. 20 vs. Texas State. The final three home games will kickoff at 2 p.m.
Tickets for all Sam Houston home games at Bowers Stadium and the "Battle of the Piney Woods" contest with Stephen F. Austin October 23 at Reliant Stadium are onsale now at www.gobearkats.com/tickets .
Fans also may visit the Sam Houston athletic ticket office located in the Ron Mafrige Field House located in the south end zone of Bowers Stadium. Ticket office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
