The ETSU and UVA Wise football teams will meet for only the second time on Saturday when the Highland Cavs come to Johnson City for the Bucs’ home opener at William B. Greene Jr. Stadium.
The last meeting ended with a big win for ETSU in the 2021 season.
This time, the two new head coaches made it very clear that neither of them knows much about the other on Saturday night.
“I’ve never gone into a week knowing less about a team than I did this week,” ETSU head coach Tre Lamb said. “I don’t have a lot of footage to look at because last year they were scattered in different places. Quincy, Northern Michigan. Coordinators from different places. We don’t have any game footage of them because they haven’t played a game yet. So we have to approach this game very cautiously.
The Bucs were fresh off an opening loss at Appalachian State and let the game slip away in the second half after getting within one point late in the third quarter.
Now the Bucs are focused on improving and making sure they get their first win of the Tre Lamb era.
“We’re going to focus on ourselves and try to get better. This is a nerve-racking look ahead for us because we face North Dakota State next week,” Lamb added. “We can’t look past UVA Wise. We need to get our first win and play better, talk about our identity and who we want to be.”
As for UVA Wise, head coach Gary Bass and his staff are eager to get back on the field and compete against another team. With no game on the schedule yet, the Cavs are using the first week to figure out who they are – much like the Bucs.
The biggest emphasis for us when we talk about opponents is that they are opponents and numbers. We don’t talk about who they are or where they are. They are opponent number one because we have to be the best version of ourselves and take care of ourselves,” Bass said. “Change is a process, not an event. We’re not going to go out there in the first week where everything depends on that first week.
Kickoff for the Bucs and Cavs is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.
