[10/31/03] St. Aloysius will be looking to extend its win streak to three games in tonight at home against West Lincoln at 7:30.

The Flashes (4-5, 3-4 Region 4-1A) will also try to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. If Cathedral and Stringer each lose and St. Al wins, the Flashes game next week against Cathedral could determine the final playoff participant.

But St. Al coach Jim Taylor isn’t ready to look ahead quite yet.

“When you’re not on top of the world, you don’t go into overlooking people even though Cathedral is next. That hadn’t even been mentioned really,” Taylor said.

West Lincoln (1-8, 1-6) struggled out of the gate before finally winning its first game on Oct. 16.

“Even though the wins haven’t been good, they’re much improved over the past few years,” Taylor said.

Behind first-year head coach Ron DuPree, West Lincoln has been fairly one-dimensional on offense all season. The Bears run a unique style known as a stack-I and basically run left, middle and right.

“It’s got two backs just up real close to the quarterback. I mean they’re just right on top of him,” Taylor said. “Then they’ve got one sitting back deeper. They don’t run a bunch of plays out of it, but it’s a lot of power offense.”

But that doesn’t mean they’ll be easy to stop.

West Lincoln’s offense has been impressive in its last two games. Two weeks ago, the Bears beat Dexter 46-0. Last week, Alan Skates’ 123 rushing yards and two touchdowns helped West Lincoln put up 36 points on Stringer, which still won by 27.

“Defensively for us it’ll be a test because, all in all, our biggest problem stopping people is somebody that comes right straight at us hard,” he said.

On the flip side, West Lincoln has not been able to stop opponents from scoring. The Bears have given up a region-high 367 points in nine games, averaging more than 40 points allowed per contest.

Last week, the Flashes rolled over Dexter (0-8, 0-7) for a 46-12 win the most lopsided of the season.

“We moved the ball well on offense and really had to work hard on defense because Dexter ran a wide-open offense and we had to do a lot of chasing,” Taylor said. “But it was a good experience and we had a good game.”

Behind Warren County rushing leader Rob Jones (905 yards and 12 touchdowns), St. Al should have no problem finding the endzone tonight.

“Hopefully, we can score 40. That has to be seen,” Taylor said. “It looks to be a good matchup with an opportunity for us to extend our win streak.”