Sugar Skulls look to bounce back in road game at Duke City

The Tucson Sugar Skulls look to move on from a 67-66 loss to the San Diego Strike Force in its home opener last Saturday when it takes on the Duke City Gladiators tomorrow in Albuquerque.

Tucson held a 17-point lead with 11:18 remaining in the game last week but due, in part, to blown man-to-man coverage in the secondary, it wasn’t able to hold on for the win. San Diego won the game as time expired when Steve Cluley found Rashad Ross for an 8-yard touchdown pass.

“We gotta make stops; we gotta make more than two or three stops,” head coach Dixie Wooten said after the loss. We just gotta play defense; we didn’t play defense all night. We played man like every other team played against them. We played man and we didn’t get the job done.”

Tucson running back Mike Jones described the team’s mood after the game last Saturday.

“The feeling is everybody is emotional right now; nobody on this team likes losing, and to lose at home, that’s like an extra shot in the stomach” he said. “At the end of the day, we gotta come together, it’s not the last game of the season. We’ve got a long way to go, so we’ll come back strong and better.

Tucson kick returner Benjamin Jones was named the IFL Special Teams Player of the Week. Jones returned eight kicks for 215 yards last Saturday, including a 50-yard return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

The official attendance for the Sugar Skulls’ home opener at Tucson Arena was 2,092.

The Tucson Sugar Skulls (1-2) play tomorrow in Albuquerque against Duke City (1-3). Kickoff is at 5:05 p.m Tucson time. You can livestream the game on the Indoor Football League’s YouTube channel.

FOLLOW @KEVINMURFEE ON TWITTER!

ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com writing intern Kevin Murphy was born and raised in Tucson, and has followed Arizona Wildcats athletics since childhood. Murphy is a journalist product manager with the Green Valley News & the Sahuarita Sun. He is currently attending the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU where he is working towards a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication and Media Studies.