The Sallisaw Black Diamonds will look for their second straight victory for the second time this season when they welcome the Broken Bow Savages to town tonight for a 7 p.m. District 4A-4 game at Perry F. Lattimore Stadium.
The Black Diamonds (3-2 overall, 1-1 in district play) got their first District 4A-4 win last Friday night in a 4117 homecoming win over the Stilwell Indians, which was the team’s first district win since Sept. 24, 2021.
“We had a good homecoming victory over Stilwell last week,” Sallisaw coach Brandon Tyler said. “I thought the kids played well. We started off kind of slow, but once we got rolling, we played pretty good.”
Last week’s district win put the Black Diamonds in a fourway tie for third place in the District 4A-4 standings, one game behind Poteau (who comes to town Oct. 19) and Ada (who beat Sallisaw 7-0 in the district opener Sept. 22).
“This is a big game for playoff ramification,” Tyler said. “We talked to our kids about it. We’ve got to go out and take care of business.”
The Savages (1-3, 1-1) are one of those teams tied with Sallisaw for third place. They won their district opener 2821 over Madill before losing 30-27 to Fort Gibson last week. The Savages lost their season opener on zero week 23-13 to McAlester, then lost 20-19 to Durant the following week. Their annual battle with archrival Idabel was canceled due to storms.
“Broken Bow is a very good-looking team,” Tyler said. “They’re very athletic. They’re still your typical Broken Bow team. They’ll have big kids out there who can run. They have one of the best kids in the district in the (Kyran) Whitfield kid (who plays wide receiver and free safety). He does a lot for their team. They are very well coached. They’re very physical up front. They run to the ball on defense. We definitely have our work cut out for us. Their 1-3 record is kind of deceiving. They’ve been in every ball game. They just haven’t been able to win. They are a very good football team. It should be a good football game.”
Tyler said the Black Diamonds need to play sound in all facets of the game to get their second straight District 4A-4 win.
“We have to play well,” he said. “We can’t turn the ball over. We have to play well defensively. Offensively, we’ve got to get some stuff going early.”
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CORRECTION
In the Stilwell homecoming game story in Wednesday’s edition, due to a roster change not made known to Your TIMES, a Sallisaw player was misidentified on a punt return. That punt returner was Brodi Nickell.
