Fourth-ranked Straughn isn’t taking anything for granted Friday night, as the Tigers host Bullock County for homecoming, head coach Trent Taylor said Wednesday.

“They’ve got a pile of athletes, and from what we can tell from the couple of films we have on them, they spread the field,” Taylor said. “Anytime a team does that, it’s scary. It takes just one blown assignment on defense to where a guy can go the distance on you. They’ve got guys that are very, very capable of that.”

Straughn (5-0, 3-0 in Class 4A, Region 2) is coming off a 42-25 rival win over Opp, and the Tigers are the only team in the county that’s undefeated.

Friday night’s will start a two-game stretch at home for the Tigers. On Oct. 8, Straughn will face Andalusia in region play.

“We’re glad we hadn’t lost one,” Taylor said. “We ain’t throwing any party or anything like that.

“You look at where we were last year, we were 2-3 at this point (after losing to Opp in 2009), and I guarantee you most everybody in the county would’ve written us off, and then our kids continued to improve and do the things we asked them to do at practice,” he said. “Then, we made a great run at the end of the year. I could assure you we have told them the same things can happen, just in reverse.”

Taylor reiterated the same thing he said about being consistent on both sides of the ball leading up to the game against Bullock County (0-5, 0-3).

“I think that’s always certainly a concern,” he said. “You want to play a whole game. I still don’t know if we’ve played four complete quarters on both sides of the ball.

“I think we had a good first half last week on the offensive side of the ball, and to be quite honest with you, we did some good things on the defensive side of the ball,” he said. “We want to be better than average, and I think our kids played well in a game like that. I think our kids handled it as best a high school group can handle it.”

Despite it being homecoming week, Taylor said he told his players to focus on one thing — “football.”

“I think our kids have done a pretty good job of (focusing on football),” he said. “We had a good day on Monday — it didn’t start like we wanted it to on Tuesday, but our kids found their focus, and we finished up pretty well. “We’ll see how it goes (Wednesday) and (today),” he said. “For the most part, they understand where they’re at right now.”

Taylor said while the second half of the season will start Friday night, his players are aware that there is still plenty of football left to play.

“I told our kids on Monday in my opinion the two best teams on our schedule are ahead of us,” he said.

Kickoff in Straughn is at 7 p.m.