Sports

The Okanagan Sun head into this weekend's BCFC game against Kamloops in an unusual situation.

A perennial playoff team, after six games, the Sun are fighting for their playoff lives and face a must win against the Broncos.

"That goes without saying," says Head Coach Gavin Lake.

"At 1-5, if there's any playoff chance this is it."

Photo: Contributed

The Okanagan Sun had 9 turnovers against the Vancouver Island Raiders last weekend.

The lone win for the Sun came during week 2, when they they scored 21 second quarter points en-route to a 35-7 win in Kamloops.

After following that up with a heartbreaking 30-29 loss in Nanaimo against the defending champion Raiders, the club looked like it had turned the corner.

However, the Sun have yet to find the win column again.

Last week, the Raiders took advantage of nine Sun turnovers as they posted a 44-28 win at the Apple Bowl.

As a result, the Sun enter the weekend 0-3 at home, and in a tie with the Broncos for the fourth and final playoff spot.

On Saturday, they will need to beat Kamloops for the second time this season to break that tie.

"They're going to be a hungry team. We have to recognize that this is a group that wants to get into the playoffs just as bad as we do, so if we don't match their intensity it's going to be tough."

Lake says his club's performance last weekend looks worse on paper than it actually was.

"You can take away Cam's (Quarterback Cam Bedore) interception on a wrong read and you can look at the one fumble, but after that we blew three deep balls in coverage, so we definitely had to look at our secondary. We had one guy on a kick return jump out of the lane that went for a long touchdown, so those were huge. We had a muffed punt on a punt fake which was uncharacteristic, something that you do once in a million years. So in terms of turnovers, were they normal, run of the mill turnovers, interceptions and fumbles? Two of them were. After that it's something we have to address in terms of our unit integrity."

Lake says he still has confidence in his young pivot.

"That kid is just a gamer. Great attitude, he's intelligent, he's getting better with his reads, he's picking up the tempo of the game. You're looking at guy, who at 19 years of age is doing everything we've asked him to do."

After this weekend, the Sun still have games remaining with the still unbeaten Raiders and Rams, plus one with the winless Chilliwack Huskers.

The Broncos have a much easier road ahead with two against the Huskers and one with the Westshore Rebels.