Siloam Springs' football team hits the road Friday for its second longest road trip of the season when the Panthers travel to Sheridan to open 6A-West Conference play.
The nearly four-hour trip will be just part of the challenge for the Panthers as they face a winless Yellowjackets team that has been outscored 156-26 in its first three games of the season.
After earning its first victory of the season last Friday 35-21 over Class 7A Van Buren, Siloam Springs is looking to even its record to 2-2 overall with a win at Sheridan, but the Panthers can't afford to play poorly on the road, according to their head coach.
"You know when you've been in the situation we've been in, you've got to come to play every Friday night," Bryan Ross said. "Hopefully, our kids understand that. I think we've played well our two games at home, but on the road, maybe not so much. We've still got so many things to improve on to get to be the team that we want to be."
Sheridan (0-3), under first-year coach Lance Parker -- who was hired to replace Louis Campbell -- lost its season opener 51-13 to Little Rock McClellan and then was pounded 56-0 by Arkadelphia in Week 2. The Yellowjackets lost 49-13 last week to White Hall.
"They've definitely struggled," Ross said. "I think they're trying to find their identity. They're not a triple option team anymore like they were under Coach Campbell. It always takes a while to find out who you are. I hope they don't find it this week. I hope it's later in the year when they figure it out."
Ross said the Yellowjackets' look will remind fans of what Bryant did when Parker was offensive coordinator there for several years. Last year, Parker worked under former Siloam Springs head coach Billy Dawson (2004) at Russellville.
"They're in the gun, but they do a ton of shifting and motion stuff, trying to get you in a bad alignment," Ross said. "That's what (Parker) did at Bryant. If you'll remember, they motioned all over the place. They had a few plays where they ran, but they ran them from an ungodly amount of formations and all that."
Sheridan sophomore quarterback Brayden Sites has completed 18 of 44 passes for 203 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. Sites is one of several sophomores seeing extensive playing time for the Yellowjackets.
Senior Justin Pruitt leads the team in rushing with 17 carries for 142 yards (8.4 yards per carry) with one touchdown, all of which came last week against White Hall.
Running back A.J. Allen has 33 carries for 119 yards, while Jason May has five catches for 69 yards.
Siloam Springs is coming off a 495-yard performance offensively against Van Buren, led by 312 yards in the passing game from junior quarterback Landon Ellis, who completed 13 of 19 passes and threw three touchdowns. On the season, Ellis has completed 37 of 63 passes for 690 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions.
Two of those TD strikes went to senior Luke Gumm, who hauled in five passes for 171 yards. Gumm leads all Siloam Springs receivers with 13 catches for 326 yards, averaging more than 25 yards a catch. Junior Primo Agbehi has 12 receptions for 180 yards.
Siloam Springs junior running back Kaiden Thrailkill turned in his second 100-yard rushing performance last week with 132 yards on 28 carries and two touchdowns. He also caught two screen passes for 71 yards, including a 47-yard touchdown. Thrailkill leads the Panthers in rushing with 67 rushes for 335 yards, an average of five yards per rush.
"Hopefully, we can stay consistent and continue to get better and just execute," Ross said. "Hopefully, we can do that and limit some of our pre-snap mistakes. We're still shooting ourselves in the foot too much. We were able to overcome it (last week). That's the point about making improvement. At some point, you won't be able to overcome it. You're going to have to play mistake-free football and hopefully, we'll improve."
Defensively, the Panthers gave up 417 yards to Van Buren, but they were able to come up with two interceptions, a fumble recovery and a turnover on downs at times when they needed it the most.
"We got some turnovers and I thought we were much more physical up front than we were against Harrison (in Week 2)," Ross said. "I don't think that there's any coincidence with getting (Corbin) Collins back on defense and (Kameron) Greenlee coming back and being able to play. There's no doubt it helped us. I saw our outside 'backers playing more physical, taking on lead blocks and really setting the edge hard -- things we didn't do against Harrison. We practiced that way last week, and we took practice to the games."
Sports on 09/20/2017