Enterprise to host Montgomery’s Carver this Friday

The Enterprise Wildcats (1-0) will look to keep their 2021 momentum going this Friday, Aug. 27, as they play host to the Carver Wolverines (0-1) out of Montgomery.

Enterprise is coming off a dominating 57-21 win over Bay (Fla.) this past week, while Carver is playing its first game under new head coach Marcus Gardner. Carver is coming into this game without having played a spring game or a fall preseason game, as well. That sense of newness brings some challenges to the Wildcat coaching staff.

“We know absolutely nothing about them,” Enterprise coach Rick Darlington flatly said. “They have a completely new coaching staff. Last year they had a really good quarterback and a good running back, though.”

Darlington said that while he’s used to not really knowing what the other side will do defensively, this is unusual for the Enterprise defense heading into the second game of the season.

“You never know what someone will try to defend the ‘single wing’ with but for (the defense), they’re going in sort of blind,” Darlington said. “We don’t really know anything they’re going to do, so it’s a lot harder for the defense to prepare for.”

Enterprise defense coordinator Jed Kennedy said that he expects Carver to run a similar offense that they have in previous years, more of a “spread” style offense but without any film to look at it’s still uncertain.

“I think they’ll be very athletic at the skill positions and they’ll be big up front on both sides of the ball,” Kennedy said.

On the other side of the field will be a familiar face as former Enterprise cornerbacks coach Clifton Herbert has taken over as offensive coordinator of the Wolverines. Herbert – a California native – played receiver at Hawaii in college before becoming a defensive backs coach at Alabama A&M. He worked as cornerbacks coach at Enterprise in 2018.

Darlington said that more than anything he just wants to see even more improvement this week.

“We want to see our guys continue to get better,” Darlington said. “We want to keep seeing that improvement. I like offensively we played better than we did against Early County (in the spring game).

“For the most part, we blocked what they put up there the way we were supposed to and that was a good thing. I felt like we hadn’t been getting better since the spring, so that was good to see. We want to continue that.”

Last season, the Wildcats piled up nearly 300 yards rushing against the Wolverines. Defensively, Kennedy said he, too, wants to continue to see his defense, which pitched a dominating first half against Bay, continue to improve up and down the depth chart.

“I think out of the first three years we’ve been here that was the best we’ve played defensively and I’m proud of that,” Kennedy said. “My hope is we are really, really young at a lot of spots and I want to use to take big leaps each week.

“We tackled really good in the first half, in the second half we didn’t tackle as well as we should have. The good thing is we got lined up (right) and I think 90 percent of mistakes happen before the snap. As the game went on I thought we weren’t as crisp as we were in the first half, which we want to improve on.”