Before last week’s game with Hamilton, Nanih Waiya football coach James Courtney said the Lions were probably one of the best 0-3 teams in the state.
That proved to be true as the Lions took an early lead and a stingy defense to take a 26-7 win over the Warriors on Friday night.
Nanih Waiya falls to 1-3 on the season and will host Bruce on Friday night.
Courtney said he was somewhat disappointed in his team’s performance against the tough but winless Trojans.
“We just didn’t play well overall,” Courtney said. “I thought we took a step back. We didn’t block as well as we did last week and didn’t run as hard as we did last week. They did some stuff on defense that we should have taken advantage of. We broke some runs but just couldn’t get gone. I just didn’t think we played as hard as we have been playing.”
The Lions built an early lead, despite a pair of promising drives early on from the Warriors. Hamilton scored late in the first quarter as they went 80 yards in six plays and scored on a 3-yard run with 1:38 left in the first quarter. The try for two failed and the Lions led 6-0.
After turning the Warriors over on downs near midfield, Hamilton went 56 yards in four plays and scored on a 46-yard fade pass with 10:18 left in the second quarter. The try for two failed and the Lions led 12-0.
“A lot of times on defense, we were right there to make the play,” Courtney said. “Our goal was to try to get the linebackers there unblocked. They just have to make the tackles. And they just have better athletes than we do and just threw it up a couple of times to the big, fast receiver. I didn’t think we played that first long pass bad, he was just faster and bigger than our guy and they made a good throw.”
The Warriors then answered with a nine-play, 63-yard run as Isaiah Russey scored on a 4-yard run with 5:21 left in the half. Jake Vick’s PAT was good and the Warriors cut the lead to 12-7.
But just the Trojans answered right back and returned the ensuing kick 63 yards for a touchdown with 5:09 left in the half. The try for two failed again and Hamilton held an 18-7 lead.
The Warriors again put together an 8-play drive but eventually turned the ball over on downs as the Lions took the 11-point lead into the half.
“We can’t withstand a negative play on offense,” Courtney said. “We struggle to recover from that because we aren’t very explosive right now. And we didn’t take advantage of what they were giving us. They had a strong shade and we should have scored every play on counter but just couldn’t get going. We did a good job of running counter at times but just could’t get gone. We would get six or seven yards when we should have been scoring on it. That was frustrating.”
Nanih Waiya had 191 yards rushing but just 12 passing for 201 yards of total offense. Boler led the Warriors with 92 yards rushing on 19 carries while Jake Vick had 73 yards on 18 carries. Vick was just 1-of-4 passing for 12 yards.
This week's game
The Warriors will return home this week as they host Bruce on Friday night.
The Trojans are 3-1 on the season with wins over South Pontotoc (21-7), East Union (42-40 in OT) and thrasher (56-28). Their lone loss was to Vardaman (27-13).
“They will go as their big, old fast quarterback goes,” Courtney said. “He’s a really good player. We have to do a good job of stopping him. They run lots of power reads and we have to make him hand it off. We have to squeeze at defensive end and be very disciplined. He’s a really good athlete and has Division I offers already. We have to let the offensive line do what they do and control the clock and the line of scrimmage and hopefully we can break one of two runs and get in the end zone.”
Quarterback Jay Cole Williams, who is 6-0, 176 pounds, leads the Trojans with 452 yards rushing in three games and leads the team with five TDs. He currently has offers from Tulane, Texas Southern, Coast Carolina, East Carolina, Buffalo and has interest from Ole Miss.
