Dawgs defense dooms OR 14-10
Bearden hosts HVA in Week 3 showdown
BEARDEN — While Oak Ridge drove 80 yards in one minute to create a dramatic finish at Bearden, the Wildcats needed 10 more.
Breaking up an ORHS end zone pass from the Bulldogs 10 on the game’s last play, BHS held on for a 14-10 victory Friday evening, Aug. 26.
“Our defense, they fly around, they’re fast,” said Dawgs head coach Josh Jones, whose team improved to 1-1 while Oak Ridge fell to 1-1. “They do a great job. … Our guys just did a phenomenal job of rallying to the ball and getting those guys on the ground, which is not an easy chore to do — in space, sometimes.
“We got some key fourth-down stops and some key third-down stops,” he added.
Individually on defense, among the Bulldogs coming up big was senior standout linebacker Sam Nicaud. “He was a warrior, all over the place” Jones said, as Nicaud recorded 12 tackles.
Tyson Pertle, senior nose guard whose nine tackles included three sacks, “made some great plays, had a few tackles for loss; Knockia Wynter had a couple of big plays,” the coach added. “Eric Lyttle made some plays (11 tackles); Cody Clough made some plays; Chaz Smith (cornerback), a freshman, made some plays again.”
Junior safety Kai Young added four stops an a fumble recovery.
Offensively, “We’re still a work in progress,” Jones said about a unit that managed 239 yards of total offense (125 rushing) — 90 of that on a touchdown drive.
Senior receiver Ethan Ford “made a big catch for us,” Jones said. “And Drew (Parrott, BHS sophomore quarterback) made some plays. A 34-yard catch by Ford set up Parrott’s 1-yard TD sneak making it 14-3 in the third quarter.
“We made steps from Week 1 (27-7 loss to Knox West) to Week 2,” he added. “We were able to run the ball this week.”
Leading the way on the ground was sophomore Kai Ironside, who rushed 19 times for 76 yards, including a 7-yard TD run to put Bearden ahead 7-3 in the second quarter.
“Where we probably made the biggest improvement from Week 1 to Week 2 was up front, the offensive line,” Jones said. “There were some holes there; we moved the line of scrimmage a little bit, and the backs did a good job of finding the crease and hitting it.”
“Oak Ridge is really good on defense, and we had to fight for every yard we got.”
