Jaguars hoping to finish strong

The South Alabama Jaguars obviously didn't do many things wrong in their 64-6 victory over Fork Union Military Academy, but that doesn't translate into an easy week of preparation for Milford Academy, the Jaguars' 4 p.m. opponent Saturday at Ladd-Peebles Stadium.

For USA coach Joey Jones, the opponent doesn't matter. His concentration is centered on improving his first-year team in the final two weeks of the season.

"We're trying to really evaluate ourselves," Jones said Monday at his weekly press conference. "I talked to the coaches and told them we ought to evaluate as if we lost the game. Normally when you lose a game you're mad, you're upset about something, and you

over-analyze things.

"Let's do it now, even though we won, because there are a lot of things that our guys can do to get better fundamentally, and we need to just focus on those things. I'm taking the focus off of who we're playing and putting the focus on what we're doing to be a good football team."

The Jaguars (5-0) have been a strong defensive club with a solid running game all year. Against Fork Union, USA took a step forward in the passing game, throwing for a season-high 321 yards and four touchdowns.

"We threw the ball deep very well last week, had some big plays down the field," Jones said. "Where we struggle a little bit offensively is converting the third-and-four to third-and-eight type plays. We've got to get better at that. We have a problem with that in practice, our defense brings a lot of pressure, and so converting on third-and-medium would be a concern of mine."

Two other areas Jones said he would like to see some improvement: Tackling by the special teams and the number of turnovers created by the defense.

"We had so many takeaways in the early games, and they're playing well," Jones said of the defense. "But we didn't have as many turnovers come our way in the last couple of games."