Poplar Bluff Mules ready to battle Knights

The football season has finally reached a point where it’s win or go home, and the Poplar Bluff Mules will get their first taste of the postseason with a matchup against a familiar foe.

After a first-round bye in the Class 5 District 1 tournament, the Mules will step back onto the gridiron at Mules Stadium as they host the Farmington Knights in the semifinals on Friday.

It’s not every day that the Mules get a week off in the postseason, but coach Dave Sievers said after the tough games they’ve played throughout the season, the break was a must.

“It’s been a great week of practice,” Sievers said. “It feels really good to enter the postseason, and the team seems really excited to get back on the field after the short break. During the bye week, we gave our players a chance to rest because we had some tough battles this season, so we took full advantage of letting our players heal. We are rarely in this position, so we did not take our week off for granted.”

The Mules are 0-2 coming off a bye in the district semifinals, and after going 0-6 in the past few seasons in the semis, they managed to land a win over Jackson last season, and Sievers hopes to add another.

Though a break may be good for recovery, Sievers said it was important that the team kept the edge they showed in the final games of the season. He said they’ve been sticking to the basics as usual and believe everyone is ready to compete against the Knights.

The Mules won their last matchup against the Knights on the road 28-14 despite trailing at the half. Jay Edmundson threw for 223 yards on 16/25 and ran for 181 yards on 21 carries with two touchdowns to lead the Mules. Logan Hite ran for 86 yards on 18 carries as Poplar Bluff gained a season-high 505 total yards, including a season-best 282 on the ground.

With the Mules having a home-field advantage this time around, the momentum to take the game is in their favor. Despite the win over Farmington with one of their best offensive games of the season, Sievers said they will not take them lightly.

“I told the team that we can expect Farmington to do something a little different after taking a loss to us this season,” Sievers said. “We were down in the game but showed up in the second half. We can’t take them lightly because they’ve had our backs against the wall already, and we must limit our mistakes. We feel good about what we have done, and we just have to be ready to adjust on the fly if they throw anything new at us.”

While the Mules didn’t finish the regular season with a win, Sievers said the team’s morale is good. Battling through injuries and early losses has brought them closer together, and they’ve found their rhythm at the right time.

“We really found our groove there toward the end of the season,” he said. “We are not the perfect team, but everything changed when we started eliminating a lot of the silly mistakes that had been hurting us early in the season. We’ve got a little bit more depth, and we saw many kinds step up as the season progressed. If we can maintain the level of play that we had at the end of our season, I see nothing but improvement from there.”

Kickoff for Friday’s game against Farmington starts at 7 p.m.