Pleasant Home in ‘desperate’ need of win Friday

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Pleasant Home’s Hunter Odom (8) executes a play-action pass during an earlier game this season. | File photo

Pleasant Home is in desperation mode — for a win that is.

The Eagles are riding a three-game losing streak heading into this week’s regular season closer against J.U. Blacksher for senior night.

PHS head football coach Cody McCain said injuries haven’t helped the cause.

“Right now, we’re in desperation mode for win,” he said. “We’ve been talking, and we almost feel like we’ve been snake-bitten with injuries.”

PHS lost starting quarterback Hunter Odom in its 48-6 loss at Geneva County on Oct. 12. Fortunately, Odom was back in action last week, despite a 33-28 loss to McKenzie.

Other players with injuries include Austin Chesser (ankle), Troy Greathouse (elbow), Hunter Cheshire (knee) and Zack Roberts.

McCain said Chesser and Cheshire will be out for this week’s game, Greathouse is a game-time decision and Roberts is practicing.

The injuries started piling on the team after the Eagles won its only four games of the season against Red Level, Kinston, Florala and Georgiana, all region games, the coach said.

“It seems we’ll get somebody new back and then another kid gets hurt,” McCain said. “It’s kind of catapulted.”

The only positive Pleasant Home has drawn from these injuries is that younger kids have had the opportunity to play in games, McCain said.

“That way they can lay claim to a spot for next year,” he said.

On this week’s game, McCain said the Bulldogs (2-7) have a powerful offense.

“They’ve scored a pretty good amount of points this year,” he said. “On the two films we’ve seen of them, they look dangerous on offense.”

JUBHS runs overload and power load sets on offense, McCain said.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said.

Pleasant Home already has its playoff berth secured and is the No. 3 seed of the first round of the Class 1A state playoffs.

McCain said one of the two films of JUBHS had St. Luke’s — who the Eagles will play next week — as the opposing team to the Bulldogs.

“The kids were watching St. Luke’s (more than J.U. Blacksher),” McCain said. “One of our seniors pointed out that our focus had to be on J.U. Blacksher, and he reminded them that we had not played to our standard of football.”

McCain said he’s hoping the team will win against the Bulldogs because it will provide momentum going into the playoffs.

Kick off at Eagles Field on Friday is at 7 p.m.

Playoffs news: McCain said the first-round game against St. Luke’s will be played on Thurs., Nov. 8, at 7 p.m., instead of Friday, at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile.

McCain said there was a scheduling conflict at the stadium and that was the reason the game was pushed up one day.