LINCOLN -- Westville dominated possession early holding the ball most of the first quarter which caught up with a tired Lincoln defense in the fourth when Westville scored 16 unanswered points.
The junior Yellowjackets handed Lincoln a 22-8 loss in the season-opener Thursday at Wolfpack Stadium in junior high football action. Lincoln expended a lot of energy on defense in the heat.
"The defense got wore out just from being on the field, letting them chew up two or three yards at a time, four yards, finally just wore them down," said Lincoln coach Beau Collins.
Lincoln scored on a long touchdown pass from quarterback Drew Moore to wide receiver Jace Birkes in the second quarter capping a drive Collins was pleased with after the manner in which the first quarter played out.
"They (Westville) chewed up a lot of clock in the first quarter. We were able to respond to it, took the ball down the field in the second quarter and scored a touchdown, got the 2-point conversion and went up on them, 8-6, and played two more quarters of really good football. It stayed 8-6. Got late in the fourth quarter, they made some adjustments on what they were doing. I think we got a little bit tired and didn't make the adjustments as well as they did. We've got a few things we kind of need to work on going into next week," Collins said.
Lincoln couldn't cash in on chances to enlarge its lead in the third. The junior Wolves recovered an onside kick, but had to punt then got the ball back on a fumble by the junior Yellowjackets. A face mask penalty moved the ball to Westville's eight, but a pass into traffic was picked off.
"We had a costly interception. We were going into the end zone down here about to score, threw the ball and got intercepted on the 1-yard line," Collins said.
He lamented miscues that ground other promising drives to a halt.
"We had a couple of drives that got stopped due to a fumble or a bad snap. One got stopped due to penalties. Clean those things up, I think we have a much more competitive game out of our side," Collins said.
Westville scored on the opening drive of the fourth quarter overcoming a second-and-12 with a 24-yard pass completion to Lincoln's 27. The weariness of Lincoln's defense began to show as junior Yellowjacket runningback Thompson broke two tackles on a 16-yard touchdown carry.
Lincoln recovered another onside kick and drove to Westville's nine beginning with a 38-yard gain on Moore's pass to Jace Birkes, who drew praise from Collins.
"He's been working really hard. He stepped up and made a couple of really good catches today," Collins said. "We just got to get back to practice and tune up a few of the things we found tonight to work on."
Late in the game Lincoln wound up passing more than planned.
"We kind of got behind late in the game and needed to throw the ball a little more than we wanted to. We were running the ball pretty well. They were pretty big up front and really quick to come after the run game so we had to make an adjustment and get away from what we wanted to do," Collins said.
Westville added another touchdown and 2-point conversion to make the final, 22-8.
Collins hadn't seen anything from Keys, Okla., the next opponent on the schedule. He was hoping to get film and establish a game plan coming into this week, but thinks Keys is still running a Wing-T offense.
Sports on 09/11/2019