The Red Level Tigers (3-5, 1-5 in Class 2A, Region 1) will take a long three-hour bus ride to try and tack on another region win as they face Southern Choctaw (1-7, 0-6) this Friday night.

Last week, the Tigers lost to Leroy 45-0, but head coach Tim Grimes said his team had an early opportunity to tie that was squandered.

“(Leroy) was just as good as advertised,” Grimes said. “We kicked off to them and they went down and scored. We had the opening drive and took it all the way down to the 15-yard line and fumbled on first-and-10.

“We had a really good drive, but the wheels kind of fell off from there,” he said. “It wasn’t like last year where we were down 36-0 at the end of the first quarter. Our kids played hard, but the biggest difference was where we had 24 dressed out, they had 65, and out of that, 60 of them can play.”

In order to win this week against Southern Choctaw, Grimes said the team must decrease their turnovers.

“We have to not fumble the football because we had three or four fumbles last Friday night,” he said. “We’ve got to hold on to the ball and not commit silly penalties and we’ve got to play hard. That’s part of the secret to any high school football team is how hard they play. So far, we’ve played pretty hard all year.

“We’re just trying to get better every week,” he said.

Grimes said that practice this week has “gone fine.”

“We’ve got a couple that have been banged up the last two weeks that we’re going to get back in the mix,” Grimes said. “Junior Mahone will be back this week and we’ll play all 24 of our players.”

Kickoff in Gilbertown, Ala. is at 7 p.m.