Football Preview: Copperas Cove Bulldawgs vs. Temple Wildcats
Two dominant signal callers in Anthony King and Champ Mayo are getting ready to go toe-to-toe. The Copperas Cove Bulldawgs will welcome the Temple Wildcats at 7:30 p.m. on Friday. Copperas Cove is strutting in with some offensive muscle as they've averaged 31.4 points per game this season.
Copperas Cove is headed into Friday's match looking for a big change in momentum after dropping their third straight game on Friday. They lost to Shoemaker on the road by a 30-12 margin. While losing is never fun, the Bulldawgs can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' Texas football rankings (they are ranked 415th, while the Wolves are ranked 194th).
Despite the defeat, Copperas Cove saw an underclassman step up: sophomore Kj (Lejuandro) Zeigler rushed for 34 yards and two touchdowns. Arthur Miller also played a phenomenal game despite the final result: he picked up 82 receiving yards.
Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask Temple). Everything went their way against Bryan on Friday as Temple made off with a 56-34 victory. The result was nothing new for the Wildcats, who have now won three games by 22 points or more so far this season.
Temple's success was the result of a balanced attack that saw several players step up, but Mayo led the charge by throwing for 369 yards and five touchdowns while completing 75% of his passes. Cavalli Nealy helped Mayo out on the ground, rushing for 155 yards and a touchdown while picking up 9.7 yards per carry.
Temple was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 333 rushing yards. The team's really been improving in that area: they've now improved their rushing yard total in four consecutive matchups.
Copperas Cove's loss dropped their record down to 3-5. As for Temple, they have been performing well recently as they've won five of their last six contests, which provided a nice bump to their 6-2 record this season.
The upcoming match will be a clash of competing strengths. Copperas Cove has deployed a run-first offense that has averaged 197.8 rushing yards a game. Meanwhile, Temple has preferred to attack from the air: they average 273.4 passing yards per game. So which strategy will prevail on Friday? There's only one way to find out.
Copperas Cove was able to grind out a solid win over Temple in their previous meeting back in November of 2023, winning 37-29. Will Copperas Cove repeat their success, or does Temple have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
