Reunion won’t be friendly
Spokane coach Adam Shackleford turned on the lights at the Shock practice facility Friday and had a brief conversation with Antwone Savage and Andrico Hines.
Shackleford didn’t want to take away from their practice time, so he talked to them for a minute and told them it was good to see them.
Not like the good old days, though.
Okay, so it was only one year ago that Hines and Savage were in Spokane uniforms helping the Shock to a Western Division title. And the days are still good around here – at least in terms of arenafootball2. But when Savage and Hines take the field at the Arena tonight, they’ll be sporting new threads and trying to help the South Georgia Wildcats (7-4) hand the top-ranked Shock (11-0) their first loss of the season.
“It’s definitely weird, to be here and not play for Spokane,” said Savage, who also played for Spokane in its run to the ArenaCup championship in 2006. “We’re definitely trying to be that team to beat them. We want to come in and do our thing.”
“It’s great,” Savage, who has 18 touchdown receptions this season, said of playing with Hines again. “We’re pretty much picking up from where we left off last year, so it’s been real good.”
Shackleford feels like it’s going well enough for the Wildcats. He said South Georgia will be the best team Spokane has faced since its May 3 contest at Lubbock.
“(The Wildcats) stand out on film right away,” Shackleford said. “You come all the way up here from South Georgia, you want to win the football game, I can tell you that much.
“They’re trying to fight for a playoff spot and they’ve still got a chance to win the (American Conference South) division.”
They also have P.J. Berry, whom Shackleford sees as an AFL prospect after this season.
“He’s a good kick returner and receiver – he does a lot of different things for them and we’re definitely going to need our defense to go to work to try and slow him down a little,” Shackleford said of Berry, who leads the Wildcats with 29 touchdowns and is first in the league in all-purpose yards (209.8 a game).
Hines, who threw 62 touchdowns and just eight interceptions as quarterback in Spokane last season, has played in eight games as South Georgia’s starter this season. He’s thrown an average of 220.4 yards a game and completed 60.7 percent of his passes.
“It’s friendly competition,” Hines told the Albany Herald. “But I want to be the first one to put the ‘L’ in the column.”
Extra points
Spokane defensive back Sergio Gilliam is one interception short of tying the af2 single-season interception record set by Tennessee Valley’s Kelly Snell. Gilliam has 14 total interceptions. … This is the first meeting in franchise history between Spokane and South Georgia.