The Gosnell Pirates are looking for their seventh straight win Friday night, when they host 3-4A conference foe Pocahontas at J.W. Rea Stadium.
The Pirates (6-1, 4-0 3-4A) are coming off a thrilling, 44-40 win over two-time defending league champion Highland and enter with a lot of momentum from their red-hot start to the conference season. Last week's key win allowed Gosnell to control its own fate as the Pirates chase a conference championship.
"It's a great feeling for our players and our coaches that we've been able to win several in a row and that's certainly something we want to keep going," Gosnell head coach Gary Moody said. "But each week we've got to approach it as just that game. Our win last week really put us in a great position as far as the conference race is concerned, but we don't really want to look ahead right now. I've really tried to stress to our guys that I want them to just get ready to play Pocahontas. We get another chance to play at home. I just want them to have fun and let's play a great game at home, give ourselves an opportunity to win another conference game and then we'll just go from there after Friday's game."
The Pirates face a Pocahontas team that offers a mixed bag on offense.
The Redskins (4-3, 2-2) have begun to throw the ball out of the spread this season, but they also still utilize their staple power running game, according to Moody.
"We'll see some similar things that we saw last week against Highland as far as spread the field, try to throw the ball to some different guys," Moody said. "And they'll also go back under center -- more I-formation stuff that Pocahontas has traditionally run over the last several years. It's a week where we've got to prepare for both things. They've had some success doing both things this year. We'll have to be ready defensively to stop either one of those schemes, whether they try to line up and run the ball right at us or spread the field and throw it a little bit."
Moody said his club will have to do a better job in pass defense than it did in the second half against Highland, a team the Pirates held to just seven first half points before the Rebels reeled off 33 in the final two quarters to climb back in the game.
Moody said getting pressure on the quarterback is vital Friday night.
"We really allowed Highland's quarterback way too much time to throw the ball and they had some talented receivers," Moody said. "It's something we've done a good job with throughout the majority of the season so we'll go back and try to reestablish that we can defend a team that wants to throw it just as well as a team that wants to run it."
On the other side of the ball, the second-year Pirate coach couldn't have asked for a better performance by his offense last week.
Several Pirates had big games, including star tailback Marcus Mullins, who rushed for an eye-popping 265 yards and four touchdowns -- the final was the game-winning score. Junior quarterback Dwight Griffin threw for 174 yards and ran for two scores. A chunk of that yardage belonged to Colton Godsey, who had two catches for 73 yards, along with hauling in two key interceptions on defense. A.J. Jones also had two catches for 107 yards and he scored a touchdown for the Pirates.
"We had a big night offensively, well over 500 yards of offense," Moody said. "A lot of different guys really contributed. We had some big stat guys; Marcus had another huge night carrying the ball for us. Dwight had a great game at quarterback. Colton and A.J. came up with some big catches for us. Carlos Blackman had a big catch for us. Kind of tying all that together, I really felt like our offensive line played well."
He said offensive tackles Tristan Fisher and Carlos Castro, guards Justin Mann and Ethan Ballard, center David Wright and tight end Jerry Henry did a great job blocking to allow those gaudy stats.
"I thought that our offensive line really stepped up and played well in a big game," Moody said. "We want to continue to play like that offensively. That's what I felt we're capable of doing all season long. We've seen spots of it, but we really put it all together last week."
Moody added the Pirates are excited about playing in front of the home fans again Friday night. He hopes for a repeat of last week's large crowd.
"We really appreciate all the people that came out and supported the guys," Moody said. "That's a fun atmosphere in high school football, when you have a good crowd and your team is playing well. We want to continue that and hopefully continue to have good crowds like that throughout the rest of the season."
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at J.W. Rea Stadium.
mbrasfield@blythevillecourier.com