Bulldogs loss to Arlee sets up crucial game with Plains

After Mission High School lost a crucial district game to Arlee 50-16 Friday night at Mission High School, Bulldogs coach Tyler Murray immediately turned his focus to their upcoming game against Plains.

The Bulldogs, who’ve had one of their more successful campaigns in recent history, now have to win their final two games to have a shot at the playoffs, Murray said.

“No, we aren’t eliminated from playoff contention if we can win this week against Plains,” Murray said. “Then we can still have a shot at it. Basically, the rest of the games are playoff games from here on out. We have to win this week against Plains and we have to win the following week to have a chance at it. If we win that one, we will be the third seed from the north and we will play the No. 2 seed from the south.”

Murray didn’t sugarcoat the finality of the two remaining games Mission has left on its schedule.

“We have to win out,” Murray said.

Murray’s philosophical approach towards games doesn’t allow his team to look past its current opponent.

“I am going to them every week to be 1-0 at the end of every week,” Murray said. “We jut need to focus on the week ahead of us because 8-man is a funny game. If you take out some slight mistakes we made against Arlee and do things here and there, we are in it the whole game. It’s never as bad as you think and never as good as you think it is. We just need to do our jobs, keep a positive mindset and think about being 1-0 this week.”

One area Murray said his team needs to need to work on is the center-quarterback snap exchange.

“I think we had 12 false starts purely off of our center-quarterback exchange,” Murray said.

Headed into their match up against Plains at 7 p.m. this Friday at Plains High School Murray knows his team will be in for yet another challenge.

“Plains is a pretty good team, they have some very good athletes, can get the ball to a couple of guys and they play some very good defense,” Murray said. “They are a well-coached team and they know what they are doing. They have the potential to not be overlooking them and they have a better record than us. It will definitely be a good challenge for us this week and we need to do what we need to do. It’ll be a good game.”

One area the Bulldogs have excelled in is creating turnovers. If they can start winning the turnover ratio, they can start turning some close contests into victories.

“That has probably been our strength and we’ve been able to be physical against teams,” Murray said. “If we can put a well executed plan together for four quarters, we can hang around with a lot of people. We just need to play well and execute for four quarters.”