The Westgate High football team continued to show improvement, especially in the second half of a 34-9 win at Lakeshore High School this past Friday in Mandeville, as the Tigers roll into the last portion of the shortened eight-game regular season.

Westgate has won three of its last four games, losing only to second-ranked St. Thomas More, and prepares to face Teurlings Catholic this week in the first of three straight District 5-4A games to wrap up the regular season.

“The good thing about it is we still haven’t played our best game yet,” Westgate coach Ryan Antoine said. “I think we’re getting better. We still have a young team. We’ve only got seven seniors on the team. Guys are still trying to find their way and make plays. The crazy thing is we’re experienced in some areas but we’re also still kind of young. We’re really young up front on both sides of the ball, so we’re trying to get better every week with that, and the only way we’ll get better is with experience and reps.”

Against Lakeshore’s Titans, the Tigers didn’t run as well as Antoine wanted them to early but improved in the second half.

“We went out there and we played well,” Antoine said. “We still didn’t get what I felt like we needed to do running the football. We kind of did a better job of it in the second half, but I felt like we got what we wanted on the perimeter with our skill guys, and I thought we did a great job of flying around on defense.

“We had a good game plan going in and I felt like we did a good job of executing. We’ve still got to clean up a few things, some missed assignments and all that, but for the most part I think we did a good job.”

The coach said the Tigers got called for too many penalties for holding, which is another thing to work on.

“I liked our aggressiveness and the way our guys flew around and played, so I was pleased with the win,” he said.

The running game issues seemed to stem from both execution and trying to reintegrate some players back into the line and backfield as they returned from injury, while also dealing with a different offensive line group again, Antoine said.

“We lost some guys on the line and we’ve got some guys having to play out of position right now just with injuries, and plus we’ve never played with a solid five core (on the line) all year,” he said. “It’s just those guys getting that chemistry and that continuity together.”

This week’s game is big for a number of reasons. The Tigers take on a team they’ve beaten the last two years in Teurlings Catholic (2-3 overall, 0-2 district), but it’s a test because of the Rebels’ size and strength. Westgate (3-2, 0-1) also is looking for its first district win of the season.

“We haven’t been at home since the second week of the season,” Antoine said. “Teurlings is always a big game for us. They’re going to be bigger than us, they’re going to be stronger than us, so we’re going to have to be able to make plays, make stops, make the game get into long downs to where we make them have to do things that’s out of their comfort. I’m sure they’re going to try to make us do the same thing. It’s just going to be who can execute and who can capitalize on mistakes on both sides of the ball.”

The Tigers improved upon their turnovers from the previous week in last week’s win. Westgate had six turnovers against St. Thomas More, three in the red zone, but only one against Lakeshore. The Tigers ran the ball better in the second half and have three good running backs in Dedrick Latulas, Kevion Sophus and Steven Antoine, who all can make guys miss and score any time they touch the ball, the coach said.

“We’re just trying to get our line to do a good job of firing off the ball and let our running backs make the plays,” he said. “We’re going to work on that, but our strength is our athleticism and our speed, so we’re going to continue to emphasize that and do what we can to get our guys in matchups that favor us.”

Antoine said his team needs to get a lead early to try to make the Rebels uncomfortable. Teurlings will want to condense the game and slow it down to play to its strengths.

“We’ve got to try to not get behind or at least definitely try to get up a few scores to make them get out of what they do best, and that’s slowing the game down and try to play their style of fooball,” he said. “I think it’s going to come down to who can emphasize their will and play their style of football, that’s who’s going to win.”

The Tigers still haven’t put together a complete game, but Antoine said he sees improvement every week, even against STM, where Westgate was able to do some things the coaches wanted to but struggled to complete drives. The Tigers did a better job finishing drives against Lakeshore with only one bad drive ending with an interception in the red zone on a bad read. The kicking game also is improving.

“This is a big district game for us, but my biggest thing is just wanting us to keep getting better and executing on the small things,” he said.

Westgate celebrated homecoming against Tara in week 2, the Tigers’ only previous home game this year, but couldn’t crown a queen because that week’s game was moved to Wednesday night because of Hurricane Delta. This week the school will crown its homecoming queen at the game, and also will have the band at the game for the first time as seating restrictions are eased somewhat.

Teurlings Catholic joined the same Class 4A district as Westgate High School in 2013, moved out in 2015, then returned in 2017. Here are the results from the teams’ games in the past 10 football seasons.

2013 — Teurlings 14, Westgate 0

2014 — Teurlings 42, Westgate 6

2017 — Teurlings 42, Westgate 28

2018 — Westgate 42, Teurlings 28

2019 — Westgate 52, Teurlings 25