Southwest Kansas Storm Playbook: Intensity, Violence, and Attention to Detail

The Southwest Kansas Storm fell at home in Week 7 to the Nashville Kats by a score of 41-37 to fall to 4-3 on the season. This week, they are the first AF1 game of the week as they host the 2-3 Billings Outlaws, who have brought in some fresh faces for the game. Kickoff is set for Saturday, May 3rd at 7:00 p.m. ET on EvergreenNOW.

Tough Defeat

“We just couldn’t get it done.” “We had our chance,” “we weren’t great when we needed to be great.” That's what Storm Head Coach Gary Thomas had to say about the Week 7 loss. The Kats presented the Storm with unique challenges from both a personnel and scheme standpoint, and yet the Storm had a chance late in the game to close it out, and a week after their Hail Mary win, it wasn’t to be this week. 

Outlaws Week

This week the Billings Outlaws come to town. They’ve recently signed arena stars Darius Prince and Dwayne Hollins. When I spoke with Coach the news wasn’t official, but based on the rumors at the time this is what he expected to happen. He doesn’t expect much to change from a schematic point for the Cedric Walker coached team, saying he didn’t think the Outlaws would “reinvent the wheel” late into a game week. 

“They are going to play extremely hard, they are going to be extremely disciplined.” “We fully expect a highly confident, highly motivated team coming in here this weekend that’s going to be organized and play really hard.” “We have to match that intensity, match that violence, and match that attention to detail. Everything else will take care of itself.” It’ll be the first matchup between these two teams under Gary Thomas, as they did not cross paths last year despite being in the same league.