Exporters await Raiders at Hopper

From The Brazosport Facts

Taking a breath with a week off from the grind, the Brazosport Exporters will return to the football field with a home game tonight at Hopper Field.

Brazosport (1-1) will host Lumberton at 7 p.m. in hopes of returning to the win column.

“We had a good off week working on fundamentals, and we added a few wrinkles in, plus we did a lot of conditioning with a lot of lifting,” Brazosport second-year head coach Mark Kanipes said. “With this new schedule that we have, it was hard to get everything in, so we installed some stuff in and tried to get a bit healthy.”

The Ships are coming off a physical matchup against Vidor, which the Pirates won 26-20 in overtime. The Exporters learned a lot in that loss, Kanipes said.

“We almost made a mistake-free game in the first one, but in the second one it was completely the opposite, so I would like to see more consistency,” he said. “We need to play that mistake-free football and just continue to play hard plus win the turnover battle, which we didn’t against Vidor. They gave us a bunch of chances to win that game, but those penalties we had along with those fumbles it just hurt us.”

Brazosport racked up 10 penalties against Vidor and only ran the ball for 83 yards. Vidor’s pass rush also had sophomore quarterback Kariyen Goins on the run a majority of the time.

“He’s young so he gets those happy feet real quick, especially with pressure, and they did have some good pressure on us,” Kanipes said. “So we continue to work with him on getting the ball to him quicker and we also continue to work the offensive line so that they can give him better time back there, especially with the blitzes. Hopefully he can have some early success in the game and that can help him have a good start and give him some confidence back there. He’s learning day by day.”

Lumberton comes into town with an 0-3 record, having dropped a 50-24 game last week to East Chambers. The Raiders opened the season with a 27-25 loss to Coldspring-Oakhurst then dropped a 56-14 contest to Silsbee.

The Raiders enjoy throwing the rock around. Operating out of a multiple gun scheme, quarterback Drake Boykin has connected on 40-of-90 passes for 604 yards, four TDs and five interceptions. He spreads the ball around, with his favorite targets Nate Stapleton (6-128 yards, 2 TDs, 21.3 yards per catch) and Kaleb Koch (6-115 yards. 19.2 yards per catch). But five other receivers have combined for 29 receptions for 333 yards and a couple of scores.

“They throw the ball around quite a bit and their quarterback isn’t to bad,” Kanipes said. “They’ve had some tough games, but I am sure they will be ready to go. They are just the road down from Vidor so I am sure they have some tough-nosed kids as well. But they are not going to box you in. They are going to spread it out and throw it.”

Lumberton’s leading rusher is Carson Stinnett (29-162 yards, TD, 5.6 yards per carry) and the only runner with 100 yards or more.

Defensively, the Raiders are giving up 44 points a contest.

This is the first meeting between the Raiders and the Exporters.