Shock road warriors in Lubbock

The itinerary hasn’t changed much this season for the Spokane Shock – suitcases, airports, hotels, games.

Second-ranked Spokane, traveling for the fourth time in its five arenafootball2 games, is looking for another road breakthrough against No. 5 Lubbock (3-1) at 5 PDT tonight at Municipal Coliseum. The Shock are 3-0 away from home.

“The biggest thing for our guys and coaches is the fact that it is such a great thing to play at home in Spokane,” head coach Adam Shackleford said. “We have a unique situation where at this point of the season at 5 o’clock Saturday night we probably are the most important thing in town for a lot of these folks. The guys are looking forward to that, but we know the reward comes later in the season when we get all those home games.”

After tonight, Spokane will have two straight home contests. The Shock (4-0) would like to come home with their fifth straight win, which would match their winning streak to close the 2007 regular season. The Renegades, playing at home for the fourth consecutive week, were unbeaten until they ran into No. 1 Tulsa a week ago. The Talons rolled to a 69-53 win.

“Tulsa ran the ball well, converted a lot of fourth downs and they were more physical than Lubbock,” Shackleford said. “Lubbock tried to come up and play man-to-man and get in their face and Tulsa kind of punched them in the mouth.”

Lubbock relies on quarterback Robert Kent, who has thrown 21 touchdowns with just one interception. His completion percentage, though, is just 50.4. His primary targets are John King (22 catches, 319 yards, six touchdowns), Reggie Glover (21-282, six TDs) and Alvance Robinson (10-222, four TDs).

Orlando Medlock and Victor Mann form one of the league’s most productive running tandems. Medlock averages 3.8 yards per carry and 22.8 yards per game, well more than the norm in af2.

“On first down, they’re about 50-50 run-pass,” Shackleford said. “It should be a good matchup because they’re also pretty talented at receiver, like the other teams we’ve gone against. Playing against these tough teams with good receivers is really going to help us.”

Notes

Spokane fullback Katon Bethay, returning from knee surgery, and receiver Andy Olson (neck) are expected to play. The biggest question mark is defensive end Devon Parks (ankle). He’ll be a game-time decision. … One of Shackleford’s coaching mentors, Steve Barrows, will attend the game. Barrows, the co-defensive coordinator at Hardin-Simmons University, was the head coach at Anderson (Ind.) University when Shackleford was offensive line coach. Barrows was a graduate assistant at Washington when Shock assistant coach Steve Emtman was a Husky. … Lubbock is second in scoring (59.8) and Spokane is third (57.8) in af2.