By Austin Bishop
Second-year Durant head football coach Ashley Kuhn says he's not too worried about the pressure his team will be facing when the MHSAA Class 1A Football Playoffs open on Friday night.
"The expectations are always high at Durant," Kuhn said. "That's something you have always got to deal with here whether it's football, basketball or whatever we are playing."
But don't look for the 10-1 Tigers — ranked No. 1 in Class 1A by the Mississippi Prep Sports Source and the Jackson Clarion-Ledger — to be cocky going into Friday night's home game against 4-6 Falkner, the No. 4 seed out of Region 1-1A.
"We had to go to overtime to beat a No. 4 seed (Bogue Chitto) last year," Kuhn said. "We have some experience with that and I think it's something they will remember."
The Tigers closed out the regular season in style with a solid 33-8 win over perennial 1A power Ray Brooks last Friday.
"After the first couple of series where we had a turnover and a couple penalties we really got to rolling and had a pretty good first half," Kuhn said.
Indeed they did, as the Tigers scored two touchdowns in the first quarter and three more in the second to take a 33-0 lead at the half.
Junior running back Cortez Frizell picked up 129 yards on 14 carries as the Tigers rushed for 256 yards as a team and piled up 335 yards of total offense. Quarterback Joffie Hogsett rushed for 41 yards and hit on 8-of-16 passes for 79 more.
Durant took a 14-0 first-quarter lead thanks to a 19-yard touchdown run by Frizell and a 27-yard scoring run by Hogsett.
Frizell scored on runs of 1 and 3 yards in the second quarter while Hogsett hit Jose Patterson with an 8-yard scoring pass.
Antwan Bailey rushed for 67 yards on six carries for Durant, while Travis Johnson, David Hogsett and Jose Patterson had two catches each.
Dewayne Lewis led the defense with 12 tackles, while Robert Lowe had 11 and Travis Johnson had eight stops and an interception. David Hogsett also picked off a pass for the Tigers.
Last year the Tigers rolled through the regular season undefeated but lost in the second round of the playoffs to finish the year at 12-1. Kuhn bemoaned a weak schedule at the end of the 2008 season that kept his Tigers from being sharp come playoff time.
He has no such concerns this time around.
"Our competition at the end of the season has been much better this year," Kuhn said. "I'm hoping that is really going to help us."
