No. 2 Pirates take unbeaten streak to Haskell this week

Class A No. 2 Gore travels to Haskell for its final road game of the regular season Friday night as the unbeaten Pirates look to record their ninth victory.

Kickoff inside A.B. Shockley Stadium is scheduled for 7 p.m.

The Pirates (4-0 in the district and 8-0 overall) registered their sixth shutout last week in their 62-0 win over Panama (3-1, 5-3) at home and Haskell (2-2, 4-4) lost 54-14 at Pocola (3-2, 5-4).

In Haskell‚s other district games the Haymakers downed Canadian (47-14) and Porter (50-0) and lost 22-19 at Central. The Haymakers went 2-2 in nondistrict action this season by defeating Caney Valley (36-23) and Oklahoma City Casady (27-24) and falling to Checotah (39-29) and Morris (30-0).

“They‚re a team that kind of worries me a little bit as well as they throw the football,” Gore head coach Brandon Tyler said. “I know their quarterback‚s thrown for over 1,500 yards this year and he does a great job of throwing to his receivers and they‚re big and tall on the outside.

“They‚re a good ball club and I think they‚re a lot better than their record indicates but I think they‚ve had a lot of internal issues this year.”

In their last meeting in 2019 the Pirates topped the Haymakers 14-7 in a non-district game at Gore.

A few of Haskell‚s key players on offense are quarterback Brannon Westmoreland (6-foot-5, 190-pound senior), receivers Lane Mann (6-2, 170, sr.), Lucas King (5-7, 150, jr.) and Briley Love (6-1, 150, jr.), running back Tomas Graber (5-11, 210, sr.) and linemen Briar Payne (6-3, 270, jr.), Junior Faul (6-2, 220, sr.) and Ryker Porter (6-3, 265, fr.).

“They‚re going to be multiple on offense,” Tyler said. “They‚ll play with a tight end some and they‚ll play a lot of trips and empty-type stuff so a lot of formations that we‚re going to have to prepare for this week.

“Just getting lined up to all of their formations that they‚re going to throw at us is a key for our defense. The secondary is going to have to have a big week and our corners and safeties are going to have to be ready to go Friday night because they are going to throw the football quite a bit. We‚ve definitely got to go to work this week and try to figure out a way to slow them down defensively with their passing game.”

Some of the Haymakers‚ standouts on defense are defensive end Junior Faul, nose guard Briar Payne, defensive lineman Ryker Porter, linebacker Peewee Jones (5-7, 140, jr.) and defensive backs Lane Mann and Lucas King.

“Defensively they‚re going to be in a 3-4 and like to bring a lot of pressure and play man on the back-end,” Tyler said. “They‚ll try to have seven or eight guys in the box trying to stop our rungame.

“Blocking assignments are an offensive key. We‚ve seen a 3-4 all year but not as much pressure as what they‚re going to put on us. No. 75 (Faul) is a really, really good defensive lineman, probably one of the better defensive linemen we‚ll see. All of those receivers play defense so they‚re going to be big at corner and big at safety as well. Our receivers are going to have to work at getting open against that man coverage and we‚re going to have to complete some passes. Our offensive line is going to have to control the line of scrimmage as usual and just try to get the running game established and go from there.”