The Red Level Tigers (0-1) will look to bounce back from seasoning opening loss to Cottonwood when they travel to Columbia Friday to take on the Houston County Lions in a Class 1A, Region 2 contest.

“They are going to be a good team,” Red Level head coach James Wise said. “Last year, they didn’t win a game, but they have won two so far. I expect them to come into the game aggressive and hungry.”

Houston County comes into the game having won their first two games of the season. The Lions defeated Cottonwood 35-14 in week one, knocked off Zion Chapel 49-7 last week.

Red Level comes in having lost to Cottonwood 32-20 last week.

This is the second time in history the two teams have matched up. Red Level defeated Houston County 21-6 in the previous match in 2004.

The offense for the Lions will focus heavily on the passing game, Wise said.

“Their coach is a spread guy,” Wise said. “He is going to try to attack from the outside, and I’m going to hit him in the mouth and try to run the ball.”

Wise said that Red Level will have to keep the ball away from Lions as much as possible to stop the Houston County offense.

“We have to run the ball and keep it away from them,” Wise said. “If they don’t have the ball, they can’t score, but if go out there and go three-and-out and leave them will a short field they will put up a lot of points.”

In order to run the ball, Wise said the Tigers will have to control the line of scrimmage.

“They are a very fast team, and if we try to pass the ball that is just going to play right into their strength” Wise said. “Size wise, I think we are bigger than they are so we are going to try to control the line of scrimmage. They are going to try to get up the field and score quick, and what I want to do is slow the pace of the game down to a crawl.”

Wise said that his Tigers have to work on starting the game quicker and avoiding costly mistakes.

“We are going to have to get off to a fast start,” Wise said. “Our last two games we have played from behind, and we don’t play well when we get down.  The key for us to win is getting off to a fast start and avoiding the early mistakes.”

This week at practice Wise said he will stress a lot of the little things the Tigers need to improve on.

“The things we have to work on are not turning the ball over, better tackling and gang pursuit to the football,” Wise said. “Those are the things that we have been struggling with, but we are working on them.”

Wise said that Red Level has a chance to win the game, but must focus execution.

“Like I said, it’s very important for us to get off to a good start,” Wise said. “That’s something we have struggled with, and it’s hard for any team to play from behind. Turnovers and penalties have really put us in a hole early, and that’s something we can’t have.”

The Tigers and Lions will kickoff at 7 p.m., Friday in Columbia.

It will be the first region game of the year for both squads.