By Ryan Atkinson

ratkinson@joplinglobe.com

Hillcrest head coach John Beckham said he isn’t sure which of his squads will be on the Shumate Stadium field tonight when the Hornets play host to the Joplin Eagles.

Will it be the Hornet team that thumped West Plains 49-33 in Week 1 or the Hornet squad that was dominated by Camdenton 42-14 last Friday?

“You know, you’d think I would know something about the team by now,” Beckham said. “But it’s still a mystery which team will show up.”

Regardless, Joplin coach Doug Buckmaster said, the Eagles need to show improvement defensively.

“Hillcrest has a dangerous offensive team,” Buckmaster said. “We seem to have had a good week of practice, but we need to go out and show that we’ve improved on defense ... we don’t have to have a shutout to show ourselves that we’ve improved, but we need to walk away when the buzzer sounds and know that we’ve gotten better.”

The Hornets have two quarterbacks — Tim Williams and Mitchell Jenkins — and an all-Ozark running back in Mikael Cooper-Falls that the Eagles will focus on.

“They have two nice quarterbacks,” Buckmaster said. “And Cooper-Falls is very good. Their strength is their offense ... they take what the defense gives them.”

Joplin — which is averaging 482 yards and 49 points through its first two games — will try to keep its high-powered spread offense going strong.

Quarterback Devin St. Clair has already thrown for 536 yards while running back Ron King is averaging 6.8 yards per carry.

“I’ve joked around before that after the season, we should get the Joplin coaches to come over here and give us a clinic on how to run the spread,” Beckham said. “They run it so well ... it can be frustrating to defend. It will take a very, very good game from our defense to give us a chance. We still have a ways to go defensively.”

The Hornets won a shootout with West Plains — much like Joplin’s 63-48 win over the Zizzers — before allowing 460 rushing yards in their lopsided loss to Camdenton.

“Our key has been the offensive and defensive lines,” Beckham said. “Camdenton dominated on both sides of the ball and it showed. A big thing for us is being able to run the ball. We did that against West Plains and we were able to have some success.”

The weather — rain is expected in the Springfield area — could be a factor with Joplin’s passing game.