First-year Cannon County football coach Brent Bush likes how the first part of spring practice has gone, but he says this week is critical for the Lions.

Cannon County will hold its spring scrimmage at Schwartz Field Saturday at 2 p.m. The opponent will be the same as it was pretty much all of last season - themselves.

The Lions will conduct an intrasquad scrimmage instead of going against another opponent for this year’s spring game.

“I just believe it gives us another opportunity to work on things we need to focus on to improve as a football team,” Bush said. “We have had a good first week, and I have seen improvement. There are still steps we have to take and we are headed in that direction.”

The intrasquad scrimmage also will help in regard to limited numbers.

“We will have better numbers when everyone is here and healthy, but doing our scrimmage this way allows us to split things up and work on areas of focus going into the offseason.”

Improving the defense and limiting turnovers has point a point of contention during spring drills.