By Chris Moore
Special to The News

NEDERLAND — Coming off of a convincing district win, the Nederland Bulldogs (2-0) square off against the Baytown Lee Ganders at Bulldog Stadium on Tuesday.

The Bulldogs rolled past the Livingston Lions 44-7, Wednesday at Lion Stadium. Nederland quarterback Blaysin Fernandez turned in his best performance of his junior season, albeit early. Fernandez racked up 229 yards, while completing 15 of his 23 passing attempts.

Bulldog head coach Monte Barrow said he stressed to his team the importance of starting the season off on the right foot in district.

“You want to keep your destiny in your own hands,” he said. “You can only do that by winning every week. To take a road trip like that to Livingston and come out the way we did, I was real proud of our guys.”

Barrow said he was impressed with his quarterback’s performance, but said there was plenty of credit to go around.

“It’s really important that when you play a team that gives you opportunities to make plays in man coverage, you take advantage of that,” he said. “We tried to do that fortunately for us, it worked out. The way Blaysin was throwing the football, very well the other night. His receivers were making great plays. He even commented about how much time he had and was able to be comfortable in the pocket. The offensive line was doing a great job and that all ties in together. That goes with any part of our game. It takes all of the guys working together for one common goal. Hopefully that game propels Blaysin’s confidence to throw the ball, not only when we don’t need to but when we have to.”

With a condensed schedule due to Tropical Storm Harvey, games played in the middle of the week give players and coaches a unique opportunity to be on campus the day following a big win. Barrow said that atmosphere was exciting, but there wasn’t much time to celebrate before focusing on the Ganders.

“The kids were excited,” he said. “With the schedule like it is, you have to put it behind you pretty quick because you’re on to the next one right away. It even gets more condensed this coming week with two games next week on a Monday and a Saturday. Our focus is clearly on Baytown Lee right now. Come Wednesday morning, it’s has to shift to the next opponent. It’s the situation we’re in right now along with everyone else in our district.”

After Nederland’s game against Vidor on Oct. 7, the Bulldogs will have played four games in 18 days. Barrow said that the team’s biggest focus is making sure his players have fresh legs on the backend of the condensed schedule.

“We’re trying to work on that now,” he said. “We don’t want to have to worry about that a couple of days before the game. We work in the offseason to get our bodies right for a grinding season. We’re confident in where our kids are physically.”

Barrow said he expects to see the same intensity he saw for his team’s first district game.

“We want to come out with the same focus they had against Livingston, which was better than the previous game (against Dayton),” he said. “Obviously, we want to improve in all phases of the game. At some point in the year, the kicking game is going to decide the outcome. We want to make sure we shore up anything that is wrong in that phase of our football team.”

The Bulldogs will try to move to 3-0 on the season Tuesday. Kickoff is set 7 p.m. at Bulldog Stadium.