Tonight, the Andalusia Bulldogs hope to stick to what coach Richard Robertson has been saying to his team all season — “To be a good basketball team, you’ve got to win on the road.”

Andalusia will be traveling to Evergreen to take on Hillcrest-Evergreen tonight in area play.

Last week, the Bulldogs (12-1, 1-0 in Class 4A, Area 3) defeated Clarke County, 65-57, in a narrow contest.

Robertson said now that area play has started, other teams are not “shying” away from being aggressive on offense against his team.

“Nobody is shying away from our personnel,” Robertson said. “They’re attacking our personnel because we have shown that we’ll get in foul trouble. When we ended the game Friday night, I had one forward and four guards on the court because we had fouled out two.

“We have a plan for everything, but it puts us in a bind whenever we have to go to these alternate plans,” he said.

At practice, Robertson said that he is putting all of his efforts into restoring the weak areas on the team and that he is thinking about his team down the road.

“We’ve been concentrating on our weaknesses all year,” he said. “We’ll get one play that we’ll get solidified, but we’ll end up breaking down somewhere else. I hear people tell me that that’s good. But, by the end of the season you have it all in place.

“I’m in here every day trying to get it done,” he said. “The thing that bothers me the most is that I have guys that are supposed to be my leaders and have been breaking down. I didn’t expect that out of them and if they were solid, then all I would have to do is solidify all the other players.”

On Hillcrest, Robertson said his team will have to win in order to gain an early advantage in area play.

“Hillcrest has a good basketball team,” Robertson said. “Hillcrest is Hillcrest. They’re just like we are. They beat Thomasville Friday and we beat Clarke County, so we’re both 1-0 in our area.

“The good thing is if we could get by them,” he said. “We would have three out of our next four games at home. Right now, we have three out of our last five at home. You don’t need any losses in your area. If you lose in your area and then somebody else loses one, it comes down to a coin toss and you might fall either way. You want to win it on the court so you don’t have to go to a coin toss.”

During the season and especially now, Robertson has been driving home one point to the players and it is “that we have to overcome our opponents.”

“To be a good basketball team, you’ve got to win on the road,” he said. “What I’m preaching is that we have to overcome our opponents. We don’t need to overcome ourselves, we need to spend all of our time overcoming our opponents.”

Tipoff tonight in Evergreen will be at 4:30 p.m. with the B-team.