by Alexis Trevino and Harmoni Guerrero
The Huskies prepared all during their off week working to overcome last game’s close loss against John Jay. Tonight at Gustafson stadium at 7pm on the home side they take on the Taft Red Raiders, hoping to build off of the momentum they showed in the second half against Jay.
Head coach Juan Morales shared what was learned from the game against John Jay and how the team is going to apply it tonight.
“We actually started off really slow offensively, but as we progressed through the game in the second half, we became really confident about everything we were doing. We made the adjustments, played really hard, and everything finally started to click defensively. We made a lot of little mistakes, and that cost us a lot. All in all, it was a really good learning experience for both offense linemen and defensive linemen,” Morales said.
The Huskies had a week off with bye week, and here’s what Coach Morales had to say about how the team was able to use that time:
Bye week was really good for the athletes. what we did is we focused on recuperating and we wanted to refocus ourselves and test ourselves in perseverance. We had speakers come in throughout the week. We had a pastor come in on Monday to talk about focus, we had Marines come in and give us a test on our physical abilities and they basically taught them to be aggressive and when to control it, and then another speaker on Wednesday who was chaplain from the Spurs, and he talked about being able to overcome adversity and knowing what adversity looks like. On top of that, we prepared to play Taft by practicing things we had trouble on last game and just really getting ourselves together,” Coach Morales said.
Morales also shared insight about the Taft offense and what fans should expect to see tonight.
“They have a really good receiver that they try to get open, but if we guard him, we could do pretty well. Taft has been hurting a little bit, so we are able to compete with them defensively and put them in a difficult position,” Morales said.
Morales shared with us his thoughts about Taft’s defense:
“They are a lot stronger and have really good linemen. One of their players, number 30, is all over the place. They blitz quiet a bit, so we’re going to have to be ready to handle all the movement and stay really pure to our blocking scheme. If we have learned anything, it would have to be to move fast and keep up,” Morales said.
Here is who fans should keep an eye on for the Huskies:
“Keep a definite eye on our running back. He is going to have a really great game I hope. Ramond Rios, who is or quarterback, got really comfortable last game, especially towards the end. If we keep it where its at, look for plays from our defensive line. Kriovanni Johnson and Jose Martinez are some of our really fast guys on the defensive line to watch,” Morales said.
Coach Morales described how fans can best support the team:
It’s our pink out game so we want everyone who comes out to be in pink and not to forget what the color means, which is beast cancer awareness. We want everyone to know that we care about breast cancer awareness. We want to make sure that everyone else is joining in on that fight and we want everyone who is batting to fight like a husky. We, as coaches, always wear pink, so you’ll see us out there with a pink shirt as well,” Morales said.