One half of the AJHL's South Division semi-finals kicks off Saturday night as the Okotoks Oilers look to keep reeling off their 1st round sweep of the Calgary Canucks against the Camrose Kodiaks.

The Kodiaks are also coming off a sweep over Olds in the quarter finals and will be looking to do what the Oilers did to the Canucks despite losing the season series which the Oilers took four of six from Camrose.

Oilers centre Jordie Lawson says they know that the season series means nothing to a Camrose team that went all the way to the South Final last year so experience is in their favour against a young Oiler squad.

"They're obviously an older team than us and they're bigger. They're going to come out physical and we just have to stick to our game and use our speed and we've had success in the regular season doing that and just playing our own game not getting into the rough stuff as much as they'd like us to," he says.

Lawson says in order to come away with another four wins against Camrose which means stealing at least one game on the road, they'll need to use their work ethic to hang in what could be a long seven game series.

"We were just not intimidated by them we knew and coach (James Poole) kind of put it in our heads that we can beat anyone in this league if we stick to our game and use our speed and work hard that's kind of the recipe that we have to win games. With our work ethic and we know if we can out work a time like Camrose we can get those big wins."

Last year in the same position sweeping the first round then coming in as the 3rd seed against the 2nd place Brooks Bandits, the Oilers were swept and that left a sour taste in the mouths of many returning players in these playoffs and Lawson says this team is looking to prove many wrong being the underdog against yet another 2 verses 3 match-up to Camrose.

"You gotta take every game like it is your last and if you do that you should be successful. You just got to believe that you can win, I think last year we had a lot of guys that doubted we could beat Brooks, I think we have a lot of confidence coming into this series against Camrose and we have guys that think we can win."

Game one is 8:15 p.m. at the EnCana arena in Camrose, you can catch the game on The Eagle 100.9 with Gino De Paoli and Sean Emmett starting with the pre-game show at 8 o'clock.

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