By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

HAMMOND — It wasn’t perfect, but Riverside coach Mickey Roussel came away from Thursday night’s scrimmage at St. Thomas Aquinas with optimism.

STA would score twice and Riverside once in the practice. But Roussel was pleased with how his offense seemed to get stronger as the evening went on.

“We started a bit slow but we finished really well,” said Roussel. “We’re replacing nine starters, so the improvement’s encouraging. I thought we did well overall, all things considered.”

The scrimmage was organized by having each offense’s first team and backup units get the ball for sets of 10 plays before giving it back to the opposition.

“We drove into the redzone a few times and ran out of plays. That won’t happen, so that’s not something discouraging,” he said.

Riverside’s score came on a pass from quarterback Tate Scioneaux to Nate Williams, the two combining on a 20-yard touchdown play.

Scioneaux, seeing his first action at quarterback against another squad, completed nine passes on the day.

“Tate threw well. I thought Nate did a good job running and Jonquial (Sanders) ran well, too,” said Roussel.

He said that the Rebels had a heavy rotation of players in and out of the lineup on both sides of the ball for evaluation purposes.

“That hurts your continuity, but we wanted to see who can play,” he said. “It’s a chance to see kids in the heat of battle. It’s hard to just go by what you see in practice … I thought we finished strong defensively. We had one busted coverage, something we can correct.”

Scioneaux also collected an interception on the defensive side of the ball.

The Rebels will face West St. John next Friday night in a jamboree matchup at St. Charles.

“We’re just looking to get better from now until then, every day,” Roussel said. “As coaches, we need to get the right people in the right places and put the kids in a good situation and identify the mistakes so we can correct them. We’re still going over the film (from the scrimmage), and once we’re done we should have a greater idea of where everyone is and what specific things we need to clean up.”