The Pike Liberal Arts Patriots close out the regular season on the road against Lakeside this evening.

It seems like yesterday that the Patriots were battling triple-digit temperatures during summer practice. Now they are ready to put a stamp on the regular season.

“It’s been going quick,” said head coach Gene Allen. “Seems like we just started not too long ago and here we are in the 11th week of the year, game wise. It’s definitely been a quick one.”

The Patriots followed up their loss to Monroe Academy on October 12 with a 7-6 win over Success Unlimited last Friday night to move to 9-1 on the year and 4-1 in region play.

“They’re really athletic,” Allen said. “They gave us some problems. We felt like offensively that we moved the ball pretty decent. We had a couple things go wrong that stopped drives. Defensively, they moved the ball inside the twenties, but we did a good job at keeping them out of the endzone.”

Allen and the Patriots hope to clean up their mistakes heading into next week’s postseason. After starting the season 8-0, The Patriots have struggled offensively, scoring seven points in the last two games.

“We just want to keep working on the fundamentals and keep getting better,” Allen said. “We are moving a couple people around, trying to do some things. We are trying to find out a few things that will benefit us. We are just going to keep working with what we got.”

Allen’s hope is that after a good week of practice, it will transfer into this evening’s game.

“Hopefully we are getting there,” Allen said. “We feel like we made a lot of improvements this week. Hopefully we can carry it over.”

It’s the final week of the season and, even though it won’t have any bearing on the postseason, Allen and the Patriots have their sights squarely set on earning a 10th win.

“We are going to try and win it like we do every other game,” Allen said. “We want to try and get that 10th win and end on a positive note.”

Momentum plays a factor in every level of football and with the playoffs looming, the Patriots hope to start building some positive momentum.

“(Momentum) is a big thing,”Allen said. “You can see that really in the Monroe game. We played really hard and when they scored at the end of the half, we were still fine. When they took the second half kick and scored, the momentum changed. It changed the game big time.”

They hope to carry over some momentum into this week’s game against Lakeside. The Chiefs enter the game with a 5-3 record and are coming off a 33-15 win over Springwood last week. The Chiefs have allowed 22.8 points per game. Offensively, they averaged 24.8 points per contest.

“They have been running both Wing-T and spread,” Allen said. “We are going to get ready for both of them. You see spread a lot and we have seen wing-T a couple times so hopefully it won’t be anything we haven’t seen.”

Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Reeves Field in Eufaula.