The Villa Rica High School football team finds itself in a very similar boat with its Region 5-AAAAA counterpart this week in traveling upstate to face Woodland, Cartersville in a 7:30 p.m. contest on Friday, where each ball club will try to get its grip around win No. 2 on the season.

Along with both teams being the Wildcats, Friday’s battle also pits a pair of second-year coaches against one another in VR’s Mike Falleur and Woodland’s Vince DiLorenzo, who guided his Cats to a 4-6 season a year ago. Of course, Falleur’s team finished 6-4 in his first year in charge of the Purple and Gold program.

Villa Rica (1-3, 1-3 Region 5-AAAAA) is coming off a 38-0 road loss to No. 5 East Paulding last week, with Woodland (1-4, 1-4) suffering a similar fate in a 43-7 home setback to North Paulding.

And while Falleur said it proved to be a frustrating finish in Dallas, his ball club has picked up the pieces and is working toward earning a ‘W’ in Cartersville before coming home to host Lithia Springs next week in another winnable ball game.

“It’s just about like every week. We show up, they do what you ask them to do and they’ve practiced hard. We’re a little disappointed with how the game ended Friday, but that’s to be expected,” Falleur said. “You’ve just got to move on and get ready for the next ball game.”

Falleur said everything starts in Woodland’s spread attack offensively with its quarterback, senior standout R.J. Williams. The VR coach notes that his defense will have to keep tabs on the two-sport star at all times Friday.

“Just from watching them on film, they’re very athletic. They throw the ball a lot. They’ve got probably the most athletic quarterback that we’ve seen so far. Pretty much how he goes is how they go. So we’ve got to take care of him and control him and hopefully we give ourselves a chance to win,” Falleur said.

Falleur said it isn’t unusual to see Woodland going four or five wide at any time during the evening.

“They’ll run a lot of quarterback traps, draws, counters and that kind of stuff. They’ll throw the ball a bunch. A lot of bubble screens and that kind of thing,” Falleur said.

Defensively, Woodland bases out of a 3-4 and Falleur said his offense needs to cut down on the mental errors, not turn the ball over and find a way to pull it out in the fourth quarter on Friday.

“They play hard. You know, [Woodland] could have easily won a couple more games. So we’re going to have our work cut out for us. We’ve got to go up there and play hard, not make mistakes and try to have a chance to win it,” Falleur said.