Published: August 28, 2008 12:57 pm            

Last dress rehearsal

Duncan hits the road to take on Lawton today

DUNCAN — Going into Duncan’s final scrimmage of the preseason tonight against Lawton High, head coach Jim Holloway says that there are 22 positions open for competition. And if that is somewhat of an exaggeration, the point is very clear. He is looking for maximum effort in the final outing before the season opener at Seminole next week.

“We want to be a lot better tacklers,” Holloway said. “And, in execution, we want to have as few busts as possible. The most important thing is that we want to come out of it injury free.”

The Demon freshmen will start off the scrimmage at 5 p.m. within the familiar confines of Cameron’s football field. The junior varsity will go at 6 p.m. with the varsity at 7 p.m. The scrimmage format will be familiar to the one last week as each level will have a couple of 10-play series on each side of the ball. A series may be extended once a team reaches the red zone.

While this will be the final scrimmage, it will be only another step in the evaluating process as he prepares the team for District 5A-1 competition. The process will extend into the first three games of the season, with record having no effect in his pursuit of finding the best personnel possible.

“We treat the season in three parts,” Holloway said. “The preseason, which are the scrimmages and the first three games, district and then the playoffs. We still have three games to get where we need to be, whether we’re 0-3, 1-2 or 3-0.”

Three is also the number by which Holloway gauges the look that the Wolverines will give the Demons tonight. In the fact that Lawton High is well coached, they are real athletic and they will give the offense and defense a look that it will be seeing once district competition rolls around.

One area the team will not get a good look in is the special teams, which are limited by rules. The Demons will get a couple of field-goal and extra-point opportunities, but not in a game-like situation.

While today will be a scrimmage, Duncan will approach it like it would a regular-season game in terms of developing a routine. The team will meet at 8:10 a.m. and will go through the same game day routines. The extra points of emphasis that are associated with a game week will begin Friday when the team begins to focus in on Seminole.

“We haven’t game-planned for the scrimmage,” Holloway said. “We’re still evaluating our own players. We’ve kept everything fundamental. “Scrimmaging on Thursday will give us an extra day to heal up. And we will be able to begin the thought process for game planning.”

        

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