Sacred Heart faces another tough test with Catholic-NI

What started out to be a homecoming celebration for the Sacred Heart Trojans, in reality turned out to be a disappointing party, as they fell 12-9 to the West St. Mary Wolfpack this past Friday night.
Sacred Heart head coach Josh Harper expressed a concern for the mistake prone football team that has donned the blue and gold the last few weeks of the season.
“It seems like we have regressed from the beginning of the season,” stated Harper. “In the first four games we were playing mistake free and it showed with our record. But, the last two to three weeks, we just keep shooting ourselves in the foot. Penalties and turnovers once again killed any chance of us getting the win this week. We need to get back to what we did against Port Barre at the beginning of the season and play mistake free football.”
Moreover, Sacred Heart once again was not able to establish a dominant run game this week. Against West St. Mary, the Trojans rushed 26 times for a meager 55 yards. Grant it, Sacred Heart has had a run of bad luck in the injury department lately, losing two key offensive linemen in the last four weeks.
Even though Harper acknowledges that the loss of those starters is a hard thing to overcome, he knows that his team will have to fight through those pitfalls if Sacred Heart expects to get back on track.
“Against West St. Mary we just missed too many blocks,” commented Harper. “They did not adjust their alignment to our single wing. We should have been able to run our power play on them all night long. I really thought our effort was good, but we are not good enough as a team to miss assignments continually and expect to have success.”
The Trojans have lost four games in a row and now sit at 4-4 on the year and 1-4 in District 5-2A play. The loss to the Wolfpack did some damage to the playoff hopes of Sacred Heart, dropping them from the No. 14 ranking to the No. 17 ranking. However, with two games remaining, Harper knows that his team still has a foot in the door of the playoffs.
“With us being at No. 17, we are going to have to at least win one of the two remaining games to have a chance of getting in the playoffs,” said Harper. “Of course, we want to win both games. But, if we could get in, it would be a huge boost to the program.”
Sacred Heart will face another tough test tomorrow night at home, as they host Catholic of New Iberia. Game time is set for 7 p.m.
The Panthers come into the game with a perfect 8-0 record and average right at 50 points per game. Defensively, Catholic surrenders 11.6 points per game.
“They are very good at running their Wing-T offense,” stated Harper. “They are physical up front and have some really good athletes. One of their defensive ends, Zion Hill, is a man. He can really play and he plays both ways at times. This is going to be a tough game to bounce back from.”