Liberty has tall mountain ahead after bye week

When Liberty Tech's football team takes the field on Friday at Covington, it will have been 15 days since the Crusaders' last game.

The previous game was the closest the program has come to a win since its last victory in October of 2019.

Neither the Crusaders nor Scotts Hill could score in 48 minutes regulation, and Scotts Hill came away with a 7-6 win in overtime.

The frustration and dejection for the Crusader players was evident by the emotion they showed on the field that night in the opening minutes after the loss.

"I'd be more concerned if I didn't see that," said Liberty head coach Robert Gillard. "Because that shows you how much they wanted this win - how much they want to win.

"And we're getting there, but it's a long road. It took some time for the program to get where it was, and it will take some time to get it back where we want it."

The trip this week to Tipton County for the Crusaders is another David-Goliath matchup. The Chargers appear to be among the best in rural West Tennessee - and the best in the state in Class 3A.

Out of six opponents the Chargers have played (Fairley forfeited against them last week), Covington has shut three of them out and allowed the other three to combine to score 28 points.

Meanwhile, the fewest points Covington has scored is 30 as their offense is averaging more than 44 points per game.

And if Liberty can't pull at least one of the two biggest upsets in the sport of football this week (because it would surely rival Vanderbilt knocking off top-ranked Alabama if not surpass it), the Crusaders will have a chance to see how a program acts that is where they want to be.

And Gillard said after the Scotts Hill loss the program is already on its way there after he told the team in their postgame huddle, "Look where we were when we started and where we are now."

He explained later what that meant for anyone who can't see past the game results.

"When I first got here, we were coming off the field for injuries when we weren't hurt," Gillard said. "That's not happening.

"We're finishing drills that we weren't finishing before. We're giving effort we weren't giving before. This is a very different team in late September than even we were in August. And we've just got to keep working. Keep going back to the lab, see what's not working and change that."

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news