NATCHEZ — The (6-2) Cathedral High School football team will look to shake back from a 27-17 loss against Adams County Christian School last Friday without its star running back against Centreville Academy.

Dee Fleming, who is rehabbing from an ankle sprain suffered in the first quarter of the loss, will not test his ankle against Centreville Friday.

“He’s doing good, working hard,” Cathedral head coach Ron Rushing said. “Even if he was at 90 percent, we’d still try not to play him. We’re playing Columbia the following week, and that’s a district game, so we’re going to try and save him for that week.”

The whispers around the community about Cathedral’s two losses in the regular season do not bother Rushing. Rushing, who said his team has undergone four knee surgeries with different players, acknowledged that those two losses came against teams that are a combined 16-0.

“You hear people saying this and that, but we’ve got a good football team,” Rushing said. “The expectations are high, which is awesome, but I don’t think it’s a panic. People are used to winning, but we’ve lost to two very good football teams. We’re still sitting well in district. If Simpson beats ACCS by five and we beat Columbia, we’ll win the district.”

But before those two critical district games occur in the final week of the regular season, Cathedral has to take on a 5-3 Centreville Academy team that graduated 16 seniors a year ago.

“They play a lot of freshman actually,” Rushing said. “I’ll tell you what they do, that they always do, is play hard. They don’t have the size they usually have. It’s not a typical Centreville team in that regard, but they play extremely hard.”

Cathedral will welcome Centreville for a 7 p.m. contest Friday.