Lunney using familiar plan for title game prep
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2008
BENTONVILLE — The Bentonville Tigers have a long wait until Saturday’s noon kickoff for the Class 7A state championship game against Fort Smith Southside.
The Tigers are going to stick to their usual weekly routine as much as possible before leaving for Little Rock early Friday morning and playing the Rebels on Saturday at War Memorial Stadium.
Bentonville held its typical half-shells practice Monday for roughly two hours and will practice in full pads today and Wednesday. The changes come Thursday, normally a walk through day, when the Tigers will go back to a half shell practice.
Bentonville will hold a walk-through practice on Friday at noon at War Memorial Stadium.
It’s a routine similar to the ones Tigers head coach Barry Lunney has used when he coached Southside in five previous championship games in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“It’s been a good plan for us over the years,” Lunney said. “If it ain’t broke, I’m not going to try and fix it. I looked at lots of different things, but it all came back to — especially at the early part of the week — let’s not get them out of the routine.”
The focus of Monday’s practice was repetition and recognition and it’ll be the same for Thursday’s practice.
“The only thing we want to do is make sure we have an understanding of what changes we’re making,” Lunney said. “Make sure our communication on new plays is right. Lots of repetition. Lots of recognition. Make sure we get lined up right.
"The hope also is that the Tigers will keep in perspective that even though they’re playing in the state title game, not to try and come out and be something they’re not,” Lunney said.
“Just relax and don’t try and do anything more than we’ve been doing. We’ve been playing well. We’ve been getting better.”
• • • The score of the Tigers’ 14-7 win against Southside at Tiger Stadium on Oct. 3 isn’t significant for which team won the game but rather the highly-contested ballgame that it was. Bentonville totaled a season-low 146 yards of offense but its defense intercepted four passes in helping preserve the win.
Lunney said the Tigers will use the film of that game in preparation for Saturday but they’ll also look heavily at Southside’s games during the past few weeks.
“You certainly must look at the last several weeks of film and why they’ve advanced,” Lunney said. “What are they doing different than they did in Week 5? Any personnel changes since Week 5, whether it’s injury or making changes? It’s a combination of all that. We’ve got a lot of film on them just like they do on us.
"With all that in mind, they may go and throw something completely different at you. But they didn’t get to where they are by changing everything every week totally. ”
• • • After the Tigers’ walkthrough at War Memorial Stadium on Friday, the team will eat lunch and go check into its hotel. After dinner Friday night, the team will go bowling, Lunney said.
“I’ve done [bowling] every time we’ve been there,” he said. “It just helps them relax a little bit, not be too tight the night before the game.
“It’s a long week. My thought is you get too anxious, too ready to play and this helps them.”
• • • The Tigers’ noon kickoff time will be the earliest of the season. Bentonville’s earliest game so far this season was at Conway in Week 1 for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
“I love it personally,” Lunney said of the noon kickoff. “Being a college guy, we always played a lot of afternoon games. I was partial to the afternoon games.”
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