As the Linden Patriots prepare to face the Sunshine Tigers tonight on the road, it will be the region-opener for both teams.

And looking back at last week’s 44-0 loss to Woodland, Patriots head coach Luther Davis is hoping his team will turn things around starting tonight.

“We didn’t block and we didn’t tackle,” David said.

“We didn’t execute on offense and didn’t execute on defense.

I just don’t know what happened to my boys.

But our goal now is to get the offense going.

We’ve made a few changes and hopefully that will get us fired up for tonight.”

Sunshine lost 26-18 last week to Francis Marion, but Tigers head coach Frank Watford feels his team played well.

“We played as well as we could at the time with the humidity and heat,” Watford said.

“There were several mistakes, and you can’t win ball games making mistakes.

Now we must shift our focus to Linden and trying to stop their powerful offense.

They have had a good offensive team over the past few years.”

As far as injuries are concerned, Sunshine has no one out and Linden’s only player out is Patrick Sanders with an ankle injury.

Looking back at previous meetings between these two teams, Linden has come out on top the last four years.

“Linden’s greatest strength is mainly their offense, but defense is coming on also,” Watford said.

“A lot of times, we focus more on the offense, and their defense is coming on now.

Our defensive guys haven’t had quite as many opportunities to get in practice time due to ankle sprains and things like that, but they are coming around now and getting in that practice time.”

Patriots coach Davis believes his team must play better than last week if they want to keep their win streak going against Sunshine.

“Sunshine’s got two pretty good backs, and their passing game is good,” Davis said. “The only thing we’re going to try to do is run the ball like we have in the past and try to pass some. We’ve fared pretty well against Sunshine.

They played us tough last year, but we ended up winning 34-14.”

My prediction: Sunshine 27, Linden 20