This Friday night in Monroeville, either the W.S. Neal Eagles or the Monroe County High School Tigers will get their first win of the 2010 season as the 0-5 teams will battle in a region game.

W.S. Neal comes into Friday’s game 0-5 overall and 0-3 in region play after losing to Hillcrest Friday at home 47-28. Monroe County lost to in-county rival Excel Saturday 13-12 as the Panthers scored in the final seconds for a homecoming win.

Eagle head coach Kevin Jordan said Friday’s loss for his Eagles was a game of missed opportunities, despite having their best offensive performance and production of the season.

“Well I thought we played really well on offense at times,” Jordan said. “Obviously, turnovers cost us but it was the best we played on offense all season. I thought we did not play quite as well on defense as I would have liked especially in the second half. A lot of that goes back to our lack of depth. We tackled pretty well in the first half but it became obvious in the fourth quarter, we were not tackling as well. We have a lot of kids going both ways and you could kind of see them tiring late in the game there.

“But, I thought we had a lot of opportunities and a lot of missed opportunities, but turnovers really hurt. We had a chance and the kids played extremely hard and that is what we asked them to do so I was proud of them.”

For the game this week, W.S. Neal has defeated the Tigers of Monroeville the past two years for two of their combined four wins.

Both teams come into Friday night’s game winless with a combined record of 6-34 since 2008. W.S. Neal has gone 2-8 the past two seasons while Monroe County has gone 1-9 the past two.

This year, Jordan said the Tigers are a pretty athletic team.

“Offensively, they are going to try and line up in the I-formation and run it and then they are going to do some spread stuff as well,” Jordan said. “We are going to have to prepare for the option because they run a lot of the option. That is something you don’t see week to week so we are going to have to make sure we spend a lot of time defensively on the option. They run a lot of toss sweeps. Again, they are an athletic team.”

Jordan said Monroe County is led by their quarterback, No. 12, Gereverrone Betts.

“He is a good player at quarterback,” Jordan said. ���No. 5, Wanteries Richardson is another guy that is dangerous for them in the running game and they have a couple of fullbacks in No. 32 and No. 33, Brian Nelms and Alexander Crawford. Crawford is a big bruising back and Nelms is a smaller and quicker kid. No. 15 is their deep threat and they will throw the ball on the outside probably four or five times in the game.”

Jordan said on defense, Monroe County is fast.

“They fly around and run to the ball,” he said. “They do a pretty good job of tackling. But, I want to get back to us running the football. That is something that we have a little success at but we have not had any success running the football. That is something we have to get back to, as we cannot rely on throwing the football 30 times a game. That is not us. As well as we threw the ball Friday night, we would like to feel a little more balanced within our offense.”

Game time is set for 7 p.m. at Monroe County High School in Monroeville.