Barbe showed it can hang with a top-10 team. Now it just has a few things to clean up, namely turnovers.

The Bucs committed four turnovers leading to 28 points for No. 9 Carencro last week. They will get a chance to see if they made the right adjustments when they travel today to Moss Bluff for a District 3-5A game against Sam Houston.

Turnovers nearly cost the Bucs (1-1, 0-1) in the 2021 matchup with four in the second half, but they managed to win a 49-35 shootout.

“We just have to make sure to hold on to the football,” Barbe head coach Mike Cutrera said. “You can’t turn the ball over against a team like that or anybody in our district really. If you do that, we are fighting an uphill battle. We are working on just getting better. We try to improve each week, and hopefully we do that.”

Sam Houston (0-2, 0-1) will host the Bucs at 7 p.m. looking for a win over its district rival to jump-start its season.

“Obviously a win in this game for us would be a huge confidence boost for our kids,” Sam Houston head coach Chad Davis said. “Nobody ever wants to start 0-2, and it is still early in the season.

“We won two games last year. For these kids to win this game at home against Barbe would light a fire under the program.”

The Broncos are looking to shed the tag of a young team.

“I think our kids have really come together,” Davis said. “When we started the season we were a very young team. We are starting to get to where we hate to consider them young anymore. We are at Week 3 and they have played two regular-season games and three preseason games. We are definitely maturing a little bit. We still have a ways to go.”

Barbe quarterback Will McClain had thrown six touchdown passes, three to Jamaal Levi, and completed 57 percent of his passes.

Sam Houston sophomore wide receiver Drew Dronet has nine catches for 145 yards in two games.

Elsewhere

In District 3-5A, Sulphur (1-1, 0-1) looks to knock Lafayette (2-0, 1-0) from the unbeaten ranks to bounce back after getting shut out by Acadiana (1-1, 1-0) last week.

LaGrange (0-2) will play its first home game of the season, looking to end a 13-game losing streak when it hosts Kaplan (0-2) today.

Gators quarterback Jason Wilson is averaging 172.5 passing yards a game with a 58 percent completion rate.