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The Andalusia Bulldogs (2-3, 1-2) hope to jump start the second half of the season as they prepare to take on rival Opp (2-2, 2-1) tonight in Opp.

“Obviously, we are coming off a disappointing lose a week ago,” Andalusia head coach Trent Taylor said. “Some of those were self-destructive things that we did. The truth of the matter is, you don’t come back to practice on Monday and focus on protecting the football. You start doing things like that and then you start getting kids that are playing timid. You don’t want that. Sometimes that’s the game. Give Hillcrest credit because they did a good job of tugging at the ball and things like that.”

Taylor hopes to see a strong effort from his team.

“What I hope to see from our kids is for a group of young men to come out and compete like crazy,” Taylor said. “We’ve got something prove. We don’t need to prove it to anybody but ourselves.”

Playing with confidence is something that Taylor said he wants to see from his team.

“I think the one that this group has really got to do is they’ve got to get some confidence,” Taylor said. “They’ve got to believe in themselves as much as we believe in them as coaches. I think when we get to that point we’ve got a chance to be really good. Right now, it’s kind of like we are looking over our shoulder waiting to see what is going to happen next. We’ve got to overcome that. With all that said, you are talking about a game that was back-and-forth and there were all kinds of emotions. Even right there at the end we score and cut it to within five and have a chance to attempt an onside kick. You think about how many times you’ve seen an onside kick even attempted in high school football. That’s just because usually in high school football when a team gets down there is not a lot of opportunities for them to comeback. I was proud for us to continue to battle the way we did. Everybody works on a two-minute offense, but you don’t get a whole lot of opportunities to run it. Heck, we jumped into our two-minute offense and we went down the field in less than two minutes. I was proud to see that. There was a lot of positive things.”

Taylor said that they have to be prepared to get every team’s best effort on any given Friday night.

“You can start looking at things and questioning what happened here or there, but the truth of the matter is sometimes that other team just played a good ball game,” Taylor said. “That’s what Hillcrest did Friday. I don’t know this for sure and you would have to ask Coach Smith, and he would probably agree that was there most complete ball game of the year. The thing our guys have to understand is that’s the kind of effort we are going to see from everybody. Tomorrow night’s game is no different. It’s not a region game or anything, but you are going to get Opp’s best. If you don’t go over there expecting that and expecting to give them the same thing, than you may be disappointed again. What I want to see is for us to compete and win the line both offense and defense. I felt like there were times that we didn’t do that. That’s the first time that I can say that about us defensively all year. I’d certainly like to see us raise our level of play on that side of the ball. I know that we will. More than anything I just want to see us compete, and compete from the opening whistle to the end. Let’s finish the game and play four quarters of football. I think we played four quarters of football Friday night, but I just don’t think we played four quarters of football at the level we are capable of playing.”

Taylor said this is an Opp team that has vastly improved from a year ago.

“Hal (Smithart) is having a really good year and throwing the ball all over the yard,” Taylor said. “They have some guys that can go get it and they have protection. All you have to do is look at their record and you can tell they are better than last year. From a defensive standpoint, Coach (Mike) Dubose has takin over there and has done a good job. You can tell they are playing with a lot of energy on that side of the ball. They are also sound in what they do scheme wise.”

Andalusia and Opp are scheduled for a 7 p.m., kickoff tonight in Opp.