Timberwolves Have Good Showing at Jamboree

The South Central football team got its first chance to see action against other teams during a jamboree at Attica last Friday.

The Attica-Argonia Titans and Burden Central were the teams that the Timberwolves faced. Head coach Brett Westrup said it was good to see teams like that before the Timberwolves open the season this Friday at home against Meade.

He said the Titans brought a lot of pressure defensively, so he didn’t run his quarterback much because he didn’t want him to get hurt. Usually, the Timberwolves like to run have their quarterbacks run the football.

“We’ve just got to get a little bit better at picking up pressure on the pass, and got to do a little bit better job of running our good, crisp routes,” Westrup said.

Still, Westrup said, he thought the boys did some good things against the Titans.

As for Burden Central, the head coach said that team was bigger but the Timberwolves did a good job of matching the physicality.

Westrup said it was good to get a chance to “finally hit somebody else” after the Timberwolves have spent two weeks practicing against each other. He said that practices have gone well but it’s about fine-tuning things before the opener.

“You know, we just got to polish up on the little things,” Westrup said. “You know, we haven’t changed anything. We just got to get better on our combo blocks on offense and run better routes on the perimeter.

“And defensively, we got to do a better job of getting off blocks, really work on getting off blocks and making good tackles in the open field.”

He added that the weather has made things challenging, with temperatures above 100 at times and more expected this week. The Timberwolves have had three morning practices already and Westrup expected to have more of those this week.

“We’re going to have to really focus because it’s going to be a shorter practice period,” he said. “And we’re just going to have to really focus on what we’re doing. 

”A lot more, just a lot more install and we’re not going to be able to do a lot of individual drills. We’re going to have to get a lot out of our team time and just really focus.”

South Central and Meade opened the season against each other last year. The Timberwolves won 48-6, but Westrup said that the Buffaloes are bringing back a lot of players with a lot of size.

“We’re going to have to be physical up front,” he said. “We’re going to have to use our athleticism to get us in space.”

Westrup said that Meade is likely going to use a lot of inside runs because of their size, then try to get some outside runs and, occasionally, try to isolate defenders on pass routes. When the Buffaloes do pass, Westrup said, the Timberwolves will need to sit in the right zone when running their zone coverage.

The Timberwolves are still solidifying their depth chart, as far as determining who will be the No. 1 and No. 2 option at certain positions, the head coach said. To that end, those players will get plenty of snaps so he and the staff can finalize those things.

Westrup added that he wants the Timberwolves to be physical and play smart.

“We want to go out and be very physical and just use our physicality to just shut somebody down and play tough, you know, take care of the ball,” he said. “We want to eliminate mental mistakes. We had a lot of those last year and we want to be better at taking care of the mental mistakes.”