MERIDIAN – Oak Grove coach Drew Causey doesn’t look at Meridian’s 2-4 record. That doesn’t mean anything to him.
In fact, he focuses more on Meridian’s home record, which is 2-0, as his Oak Grove Warriors travel up Interstate-59 Friday night for the teams’ third region game. Both the Wildcats and Warriors (4-2) are 1-1 in Region 3-6A, joining two other teams with the same record, so this matchup will go a long way into deciding playoff teams and the playoff order.
“They’ve played some really good opponents,” Causey said. “They’re 2-4, but they’re 2-0 at home is what I look at. They have a ton of athletes like always, so it’s going to be a tough game.”
Both Meridian and Oak Grove are coming off disheartening losses last Friday, as the Wildcats lost a 22-point game to Pearl while the Warriors fell to rival Petal in a nail-biter. Causey said his defense missed some reads on important plays, and those are areas his team can fix since they’ve excelled in those areas before.
So, how will Oak Grove bounce back this week after the close loss to its rival? Causey wasn’t quite sure when he was asked Monday before the week’s first practice.
“I guess we’ll find out this week, won’t we? You have to move on from it,” he said. “We have a ton of football left to play, so it’s just something we have to move forward from.”
When these teams met last season with playoff implications, Meridian sophomore quarterback Tevarrius Adams had 149 yards on the ground with two touchdowns and 113 passing yards on 10-of-20 passing. As a junior, he’s passed for 1,205 passing yards with nine touchdowns and 10 interceptions this season, and he leads the team with 309 yards on the ground and four scores.
Oak Grove has faced quite a few dual-threat quarterbacks, so facing Adams is nothing new for the 2017 Oak Grove defense.
“(Adams is) a very good athlete,” Causey said. “I think last year he ended up breaking a quarterback draw or something for a big touchdown towards the end of the game. For us, we just have to play like we’re supposed to play. We didn’t do that Friday night and it hurt us. I feel like if we play like we’re supposed to play, we can beat anybody. We just have to do what we’re supposed to do.”
Meridian’s defense is allowing opponents to score 28 points per game, as nearly every team it’s played has scored at least 34 points. In Meridian’s four losses, its opponents are averaging 37.5 points per game while the Wildcats defense pitched a shutout against Jim Hill in one of their wins and it allowed just 20 points to Noxubee County in the other win.
It’s still Meridian, though.
“They’re really big up front, physical and on the back end they have a handful of athletes who run to the ball,” Causey said. “Probably one of the more athletic teams we play every year is Meridian. We have to definitely be ready and make sure we execute what we’re supposed to do.”
