The Pike Liberal Arts Patriots are on a two-game winning streak, and going into their game Friday against the South Montgomery County Academy Raiders head coach Gene Allen said the team is looking to come home with a win.

“We’re just trying to get better,” Allen said. “We’re not trying to do anything different, we’re just trying to get better at what we do. We’re not putting together anything new for the game. It’s just basically going to be what we’ve been doing all year. We’re just trying to get better. We’ve been making too many mistakes. When we get back into district play, we’re hoping to get back on the right track.”

Allen said the Patriots had been continuing to try and eliminate and correct small mistakes the team had been making throughout the season.

“The main thing is just mainly jumping offsides and getting these careless penalties called against us,” Allen said. “We’re getting better at it, but we’ve just got to keep working at it every day. A lot of times it’s just a lack of concentration. You start getting tired, so we’ve been doing a lot of running and snap counts.”

The team’s only loss this season was to the Monroe Academy Volunteers and Allen said the sting of the loss was a little worse because the Patriots were beaten on their own turf and it was a region game.

“You look at the score, and it looks terrible,” Allen said. “But we had the ball first and goal on the two yard line with about three and a half minutes to go in the half, and we turned the ball over. Then we go tit right back on the seven or eight yard line, and turned it right back over again on down. Then we let them drive down the field and score near the end of the half. If we could have just scored right there and went into halftime 7-7, it could have been a different game.”

Allen said the team was first looking to travel to Grady and come home with a win, but also Allen said the Patriots were looking to continue to stay injury free as several players are on the mend.

“We’ve moved a few people around, nothing drastic,” Allen said. “Nothing they haven’t really done before. We just had to move a few players. Everything else is pretty much where it’s been all year.”

Kickoff between the Patriots and Raiders is slated for 7 p.m. in Johnson Stadium in Grady.