El Dorado failed to negotiate a gauntlet of the top teams in the 6A-West to start the season.
Now, the Wildcats find themselves in a four-team battle for the final two playoff spots in the final three weeks of the season.
El Dorado will celebrate its Homecoming tonight against Siloam Springs. If the Wildcats hope to advance to the playoffs, they need to snap their winless conference record.
Siloam Springs is 1-3 in conference, owning a 28-27 win over Sheridan. The Panthers lead Russellville (0-4), Little Rock Hall (0-4) and El Dorado (0-4) for the final two playoff spots. The Wildcats end the season with Siloam Springs, Russellville and Hall.
“If we’re able to beat Siloam and take care of business against Russellville and Hall, we would probably be the five,” said El Dorado coach Steven Jones. “As it sits, us Russellville and Hall are the only teams left that have a winless conference schedule. There’s four teams playing for the five and six.”
Mired in a five-game skid, Jones said the playoff situation hasn’t been emphasized in the locker room.
“Not really, we’re just trying to focus on Siloam and executing what we’re doing and not really put a lot of pressure in that aspect,” he said.
Siloam Springs has dropped three consecutive games. The Panthers fell to Lake Hamilton (28-17), Greenwood (48-13) and Benton (28-26) in the last three weeks.
The Wildcats fell to Benton 41-31 last week. El Dorado had four turnovers and had two punts blocked in the loss. Mistakes have proven costly for the Wildcats during their struggles.
“Ball security is huge. It’s such a little thing but if we can take care of the football and not give it to the opponent, you’d have a lot better chance to win. We harp on it and continue to practice it and try to improve it. Turnovers have been our Achilles heel. We’ve got to take better care of the football,” said Jones, who addressed El Dorado’s punting game, which has had three blocked in the last two weeks.
“That’s a concern but we feel like we have that fixed. Again, it’s one of those little concentration pieces that maybe we took for granted. Now that we’ve been exploited in that area, I think we know the importance of it and our kids understand we can’t have that happen.”
Siloam Springs, 2-5 overall, has surrendered 29.5 points per game, while scoring 21.4. The Panthers lean heavily on quarterback Taylor Pool, who threw two touchdown passes last week.
“They’re a lot like us, a lot like Benton offensively. They like to run the power, run the counter. They do a good job of it. They run some inside zone and then they’re able to get the ball out in play-action,” said Jones.
The Panthers average 238 pounds from tackle-to-tackle.
“Offensively with the power and the counter, they do a good job of that and mixing up and varying how they run that. They run a lot of quarterback-designed runs,” said Jones. “They have different running backs they throw in there that they feel good about. They do a good job of mixing up run-pass. It’s going to be a good opponent for us.
“Defensively, they base out of a 4-3 but if you give them a spread look it ends up being more of a 4-downline with a linebacker in the box. So, those outside backers kind of bump in spread formations. They’re a very sound, very well coached defensively. Their defensive line does a good job of getting their hands on the offensive line and maintaining leverage in their gaps and not giving up any ground.
“At linebacker, they do a good job. They blitz a little bit and their linebackers play well in space. In the secondary, they play a lot like Benton. They’re going to play some cover four against us and keep everything in front and tackle. Neither side of the ball has anything that’s just scary explosive. But they are very sound in what they do.”
Despite the losing streak, El Dorado was competitive, even at league-leading Greenwood. The Wildcats’ woes, a lot of them, were self-inflicted. Eliminating mistakes could be keys to that elusive league win.
“Ball security, offensively. We’ve got to take care of the football,” said Jones. “Defensively, build on what we did last week. We had some really bright spots defensively last week. The scoreboard doesn’t necessarily show it, but we put our defense in a bind a lot of times. I thought, overall, the defense played their best game of the year. So, just building on what we did last week would be a key.”
El Dorado ended last week’s game with its quarterback, running back and receiver on the sideline with injuries. The Wildcats also played without senior defensive lineman Jacoby Hankton.
Jones said Hankton, quarterback Eli Shepherd and senior back Alex Hicks should all start tonight. Senior receiver Devunte Kidd, however, was listed as questionable on Wednesday.
“Devunte had a knee injury Friday night. We’re still kind of up in the air on what’s next for him so we really don’t know if we’ll have him available Friday or not,” Jones said. “It would be tough to go without him, but I know we have some guys to step up and fill in that void. If there’s a spot on our team where we do have a lot of depth, it’s definitely at wideout.”
From a morale standpoint, Jones said his team’s attitude is still upbeat. The remainder of El Dorado’s schedule has a combined conference record of 1-11. The Wildcats expect a strong finish to the season.
“There’s a lot of positivity in our locker room. There’s good team chemistry. They know it hasn’t gone our way so far, but anything can happen toward the end of the season,” said Jones, who expects a big crowd and a solid homefield advantage at Memorial Stadium.
“We had a good crowd there against Benton. The crowd was involved the entire game. They were behind us all the way. We expect, with Homecoming, to have another big crowd Friday night. We appreciate the support. They keep showing up and keep cheering on the Wildcats.”