NATCHEZ — The Cathedral football team left Dexter High School with a bad taste in its mouth Oct. 29 after a 26-6 loss.

Friday, the Green Wave will travel back to Dexter for its second-round game in the MHSAA Class 1A South State playoffs. And Cathedral head coach Ron Rushing said his team is gunning for a different outcome this time around.

“It’s definitely a revenge game,” Rushing said. “We have to have a good start this time. We started off slowly last time and had four turnovers, so we have to take care of the ball.”

Rushing said his team has had a good week of practice, and his players are itching at the opportunity to have a second shot at the Bulldogs.

“We’re excited about going back down there,” he said.

Dexter will look to spread things out against Cathedral’s defense, and the Green Wave will have to be able to contain Bulldogs quarterback Tyler Hart.

“They’re the most athletic team we’ve played all year,” Rushing said. “They like to get the ball to their athletes in open space and let them score.

“Their quarterback is a great scrambler, and the time he takes moving around (in the backfield) really opens things up for them.”

First-round jitters in his players were evident to Rushing last week against Noxapater High School, he said. In the second half of that game, the Green Wave were able to overcome those en route to a 21-14 win.

“We looked really bad in the first series, and just seemed tight and nervous,” Rushing said.

“We went into halftime and talked about relaxing and playing our kind of football. We had a great second half, and that has to carry over into this week.”

But Rushing said he doesn’t expect that to be a problem.

“We’ve seen a difference in the kids already. They came out Sunday and watched film, then came out Monday and practiced well. I don’t think we’ll be nervous at all.”

Cathedral hasn’t been putting up as many points as it did early in the year, and Rushing said he wish he knew how to bring back that kind of production.

“We were hitting on all cylinders at first, then sort of hit a rut,” he said. “We were having so much success throwing the ball, but if you look at the stats lately, we’ve been running it a lot more.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Friday at Dexter.