Black Diamonds look to end Stigler’s dominance tonight

The Sallisaw Black Diamonds will look to see something happen tonight that has not happened for a while — start the season at 2-0 and knock off the Stigler Panthers, who the Black Diamonds will face at 7 tonight in Stigler.

“It would be a great win on the road,” Sallisaw coach Brandon Tyler said. “We’re on the road the next three weeks. We go to Stigler, Eufaula and Hilldale before we come back home in October. We’re going to be on the road for a little while. It is what it is. You have to win playoff games on the road. You have to go win on the road. It would be a big win (tonight at Stigler) for us. Like I told the kids (Wednesday) morning, we want to be 2-0 going into the bye week (next week), get healed up and get closer to district play and be ready to go there. That’s where we want to be come Week 4 (at Hilldale on Sept. 27, the District 4A-4 opener).”

The Black Diamonds (1-0) broke a fiveyear streak of losing their season opener as they defeated the Pryor Tigers 31-14 in a Zero Week game last Friday night at Perry F. Lattimore Stadium.

“It was a good win for us and our program,” Tyler said. “Pryor is a good, quality (Class) 5A team. It was a secondround playoff team last year. It was kind of back and forth there early. Once we kind of got things figured out there, we kind of took control on both sides. I thought our kids responded well. We played offense and defense good.”

However, the film from the game showed areas where the Black Diamonds will need to improve in order to knock off the Panthers tonight.

“We have some things we have to shore up on our kicking game,” Tyler said. “We gave up big kickoff returns. Other than that, I thought we played a good football game for the first time out. We’re going to continue to work and try to get better. We still have a few things on the offensive line that we have to get shored up. Other than that, I think we’ll be ready to go Friday night. You always have to get better at everything. Defensively, we just got to get aligned. We have to make sure our linebackers aren’t running too wide on the counter. Our defensive line has to contain (Stigler’s ball carriers). Our defensive backs have to have good coverage on our back end. There’s always something to work on. We just have to be mentally ready when we get off the bus down there Friday.”

Tonight will be the home and season opener for the Panthers (0-0). Tyler said while there’s a different head coach for the Panthers, it pretty much will be the same ol’ Panthers.

“They’re still a good football program,” Tyler said. “They had a coaching change in the spring. Coach (Cade) Sherwood left and went to Warner. Kevin Wilkett, their offensive coordinator, has taken over now. It’s going to be a lot of the same things you’re going to see offensively because he’s been running that system for a long time now. They do a good job of what they’re doing. They spread you out and spring you (with wide receivers). They’re going to run inside zones and counters. It’s just going to be things they’ve been doing for the last 10 years since (former) coach (Brad) Risenhoover was there. We still have to go prepare. Defensively, it’s going to be the same thing we saw last year. We’re going to see the 3-4 (defense).

• • • TO GET THERE — Take U.S. 59 south to Oklahoma State Highway 9. Take Highway 9 west to Stigler.