JONESVILLE — With District 3-1A as wide open as it has been in quite some time, the Block Bears will look to stay in a tie for first place with Northwood-Lena, but it won’t be easy.

Block, 1-5 overall and coming off its first win since the 2005 season, will host the 4-2 LaSalle High School Tigers Friday night for homecoming. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. While the Bears are 1-0 in district play after a 26-18 win on the road at Montgomery, this will be the Tigers’ first district game of the season.

“It’s a big concern. Homecoming in itself is a distraction. I hate to schedule a district game for homecoming,” Block head coach Benny Vault Jr. said. “We’ve got to keep our players focused.”

Vault added that the last three games have been three weeks of practice against the spread offense. “So they’re not going to surprise us. We’re going to relax and play.”

He then said that the Bears have got to eliminate turnovers and that his team still has some work to do. But he is also confident that his team can be a contender in District 3-1A.

“We looked better last week than we did the week before,” Vault said.

After getting out to a 2-0 start, LaSalle has been 2-2 in its last four games. The Tigers are coming off a 40-14 win over Tensas High School.

“Basically we’ll get into the double win and run our offense,” Vault said. “We won the time of possession last week. We had almost double the time that Montgomery had. We’ll just try to be consistent on offense.”

LaSalle will use a five-man front and sneak up their linebackers some to try to contain Block’s running game and try to make the Bears’ offense one-dimensional. But that may not be a good idea. Block was able to throw the ball some last week and forced Montgomery’s linebackers to stay out of the box.

To counter the Tigers’ spread offense, Block will run use a man-to-man defense out of its 3-4 front.

“Try to put a little pressure with our outside linebackers. Run a little cover-3. Try to confuse the quarterback a little bit with the coverages,” Vault said. “We did pretty good (with it) last week.”

However, Block cannot afford another letdown like it in the fourth quarter last week, which nearly cost the Bears their first win of the season.

“It’s been so long since they’ve had a victory,” Vault said. “I told them we had to keep playing. We can’t underestimate anybody.”