CHAMPAIGN — With three weeks left in the high school football season, the Danville Vikings and the Champaign Central Maroons enter today’s game at Tommy Stewart Field knowing it’s win or prepare for next year.
Both teams are 2-4 this season, needing three straight wins to become playoff eligible.
“It’s survivor at its finest for high school football,’’ said Danville coach Marcus Forrest. “It’s either win or be ready to go home. If you lose, you take yourself out of playoff consideration, so it brings a different level of urgency.
“We know our situation for the next three weeks. It starts this week, this is a game we have to win to reach our goal of having an opportunity for the playoffs.’’
Danville senior Curtis Beasley knows there is only one thing that the Vikings can worry about at this point in the year.
“We can’t dwell ow what has happened, we have to keep looking forward and seeing each week as another opportunity,’’ he said. “The door isn’t shut, yet. If we continue to work diligently there are things that can still be accomplished this season.’’
But, for that to happen, Danville has some things that it needs to clean up.
The Vikings had their worst offensive game is more than 20 years in last week’s 42-10 loss to the Normal Community Ironmen. Danville managed just 68 yards of offense, including negative-32 rushing yards.
“We acknowledge our mistakes, first and foremost, we can’t be blind to what we did wrong,’’ said Beasley, who has been moved to guard from tight end. “It starts with taking accountability for what we did wrong, looking in the mirror, as a team, as a unit and seeing what we can do individually to be better.’’
Forrest noted that while the offensive performance was lacking, the Vikings still scored 10 points against the Ironmen, which was more than Bloomington, Champaign Central or Normal West scored against Normal this season.
“Looking at the film, I’m not going to say that we should have won, but it should have been more competitive than it was,’’ he said. “Things happened to quickly with them going from a 7-0 lead to 21-0 in just a few minutes, that we lost confidence in what we were doing.
“We had to regain their confidence at halftime and it was already 42-0.’’
That’s why Forrest has spent all week working on basic fundamentals.
“It was those fundamental things that we didn’t do well last week that got us into that big hole,’’ he said. “Ball handling, head placement, foot placement, alignments and assignments are the things we have worked on this week. If we take care of those, good things will happen.
Beasley said it’s all about ‘getting back to basics.’
“It wasn’t our effort to mentality that was missing last week. It was about playing the right way,’’ he said.
This Champaign Central team is very similar to their previous teams, according to Forrest.
“They are going to run the ball,’’ said Forrest, noting that Central runs a hybrid of the wing-t offense. “They want to run and run it consistently. They basically try to lull you to sleep with their run game, and then they try to hit you with a big play.’’
Today’s contest at Tommy Stewart Field in Champaign is set for a 1 p.m. kickoff. The game can be heard on WDAN-AM 1490.