Panthers, Frankfort Hungry for Victories

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[After falling behind 33-7 after two quarters of play, it would have been easy for a team to pack it in at halftime and just go through the motions in the second half. Pinckneyville did more than give the effort against Red Bud, however, they came ever so close to stealing away the week one victory.

"That was the bright spot, we didn't quit," said Panthers' head coach Tod Rushing. "That was actually harder to take in the end, we had serveral opportunities to win the football game, we were in charge in the end."

What wasn't hard to take was the performance of his passing attack in the third and fourth quarters, as the coaching staff exploited a weakness in matchups they talked about at halftime.

"We talked about what we could do, we felt like if we overloaded one side of the field and got that isolated coverage on the backside, their corners couldn't cover us by themselves," Rushing said. "That was either going to open up the trips side or give us single coverage on the other side, and they were giving us the single coverage."

Those adjustments resulted in touchdown passes of 55 and 22 yards in the fourth quarter. Throwing those passes was first-year varsity quarterback Bryant Shute, who struggled in the early-going of the ball game with some rushed passes that ended up interceptions, but regrouped for a strong finish.

"He relaxed a little bit, he played a couple quarters, " Rushing said, "I think the game was a little fast for him, there's a big step from freshman to varstiy football."

Rushing praised Shute's performance, but thinks this was only the beginning for the talented sophomore. "We have to work on some fundamentals, he's throwing off his back foot, he's got a much better arm than he showed the other night," Rushing said. "I think we're going to see some nice things out of him the next few years."

Shute scored a pair of rushing touchdowns as well, but look for a lot of different faces to see ground duty in the weeks to come.

"We're going to throw the ball a considerable amount," said Rushing, "usually it will be closer to 60/40 (run/pass), but when you get down 3 or 4 scores it kind of limits what you can do, you have to put the ball in the air."

Up next on the schedule for the Panthers is familiar week two oponent West Frankfort, who snuck out of Quillman Field with a7-0 win last season. Rushing acknowledged that that's a game his team "should have won," and doesn't expect too many surprises from the Redbirds.

"I think they'll be somewhat similar to what we've seen, they'll feature Simelton," Rushing said. "If we can contain him, I think we've got a pretty good chance to win."