BY SAUL BERRIOS-THOMAS | THE MONITOR
Going into Week 1, PSJA North had just three players on the roster who made a varsity start last year.
The inexperience was apparent early in the Raiders’ Week 1 matchup with Mission High.
They went three-and-out on their first three drives, while Mission jumped out to a 24-0 lead.
Once the nerves were calmed, the Raiders found their footing and got rolling late. North only went three-and-out one more time, and that was caused by a penalty, coach Marcus Kaufmann said.
After the halftime break, North’s defense shut down Mission’s offense, holding the unit scoreless. Meanwhile, the Raiders’ offense got going, and Juan Elizondo and Arturo Beltran each scored. The game still went in Mission’s favor, but Kaufmann was reassured by what he saw from his team during the second half.
“They made this game a learning experience,” Kaufmann said. “They came back out in the second half and started playing good football. They grew up quite a bit from the first part of that game to the end of the game.”
After getting those Week 1 jitters out of the way, Kaufmann is expecting much better from his team moving forward.
“I told them that was their one freebie,” Kaufmann said. “We are not going to have another start like that the rest of the year.”
Kaufmann said he is looking for more efficiency from his offense. In Week 1, the Raiders struggled to run the ball, which led to too many passes. Kaufmann is hopeful his team can find the right efficiency this week.
“It’s going to skew more toward run than pass, unless we can complete more than 30 percent of our passes,” Kaufmann said. “If we can complete 60-70 percent of our passes, we can go 50-50. We are going to go with whatever is working. Whatever they give us, we will take.”
North is right back at it, as the Raiders host Donna High at 7:30 p.m. Friday at PSJA Stadium in Pharr.
“I’m looking for us to come out hard and fast (against Donna) like we did in the second half,” Kaufmann said. “I keep talking to the kids about being the first ones, initiating contact, initiating pressure. What Mission did to us, we need to be doing to our opponents from here on out. Once we were settled down, we were fine, but by that point we were down 21 points, so we need to come out ready to go.”