Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Portales' Tyrese Dawson comes up with an interception during Tuesday's practice at Portales High School.
PORTALES — Rams football coach Jaime Ramirez likes to find the best scout team matchups in practice when trying to simulate an opposing team. With Portales High School hosting West Las Vegas tonight — which happens to run the same 3-3 defense — this week's practices could prove to be that much more beneficial for the Rams.
But if you ask Ramirez about his offense having an advantage when it comes to preparation, his tone quickly changes to not so fast. "We don't get the same look (with our) scout team defense in terms of personnel," Ramirez explained.
"Of course, we can align and do stuff like that, but really, when you play a team like (West Las Vegas), you're gonna learn a lot about them when the first snap is snapped. We try to personnel our scout team defense based on the athletes they have on defense and vice versa. We try to put a mobile quarterback - if they have a mobile quarterback, and a quarterback that throws well on our scout team offense, in order to emulate what we're gonna see on Friday night."
What Portales (2-0) will see tonight is a spread offensive team in the Dons (1-1), who are said to throw the ball extremely well. In fact, senior quarterback Bobby Alarcon already has six touchdown tosses to go along with 371 yards on the young season, despite an injury he suffered in a 33-19 loss to Moriarty.
Defensively, the Dons' aforementioned 3-3 defense features plenty of exceptional athletes, and that is a must with what West Las Vegas likes to do. For the Dons, the name of the game is pressure, and plenty of it.
"They like to send pressure," Ramirez said. "They'll be sending four, five man pressure and every once in awhile, six man pressure. They're extremely talented - there's a lot of talent on both sides of the ball. They seem to be playing on a high right now — they just beat Grants (53-0)."
Last year, the Dons had the Rams on the ropes, with West Las Vegas carrying a 13-12 lead into the half. However, when it was all said and done, the Rams managed to shut out the Dons in the second-half, en route to a 48-12 victory.
In fact, in the 20 all-time meetings between the two schools, West Las Vegas has just one win (2003). That game, however, was won by Portales, but the Rams were later forced to forfeit, meaning that the Dons have yet to actually take the Rams down on the gridiron.
This time around could prove to be different for the Dons, as the Rams will have to deal with homecoming. As anyone who was once, or still is a teenager can attest, homecoming week can certainly be hectic, leading to those dreaded distractions that coaches always hate.
Senior defensive lineman Jase Wallace doesn't seem to be too concerned, however.
"We just have to be focused through all the distractions we're going through this week, like our bonfire (Thursday night)," Wallace said.
"We can have fun, but we gotta stay focused on West Las (Vegas) and come out with the same power we had coming out into the second-half last week. Just come out like we've came out the last two weeks and play our game and play hard defense and stop them."
