The Florala Wildcats know they are up against a top-notch opponent this week when they host Houston County on Friday night for homecoming.

“They are an upper echelon team,” Florala head coach Scott Mason said. “They are very well coached and they have a lot of speed.”

Coming off a tough loss last week to Pleasant Home, Mason said he plans to focus this week’s practices on eliminating some miscues.

“Our focus this week is going to be to eliminating dumb mistakes,” Mason said. “We were up 21-7 at halftime Friday night, but we couldn’t finish. We are fine until we tire out, and these bigger teams just lay on us in the fourth quarter.”

Mason said the Wildcats’ best defense is going to be their offense.

“We have to be able to build a bigger lead early in the game,” Mason said. “Our offense is capable of putting up bigger numbers in the first half, and we have to do that because these bigger teams just butt us out of the way in the fourth quarter.”

Another thing that Mason said he wants to see from his players is from them to not panic in big games.

“These kids haven’t had a chance to win a rivalry game for the past three years, and right now, these games seem to overwhelm us,” Mason said. “I’m not down on these kids, we are still so young and they have come along a lot faster than I thought. We are miles ahead of where I thought we would be at this point. Another year will be really big for this team.”

Mason said that he is going to just let the kids have fun this week for homecoming.

“We are going to enjoy the week’s activities,” Mason said. “On Thursday night, we have a big tailgate by the lake and I’m just going to let the kids have a good time and enjoy themselves. On Friday, we are just going to have fun a play loose. I encourage everyone to come out and watch us. We have and exciting brand of football here. We aren’t a ‘3 yards and a cloud of dust’ type team. We are exciting to watch.”

Kickoff will be at 7 p.m., Friday in Florala.