Friday night football: Second half knocks off Lions against Darlington

Published 6:24 am Saturday, October 13, 2012

The Darlington Tigers used a second-half surge Friday to erase a rough start and pick up their fourth consecutive win by defeating Christian Heritage 19-10 at Chris Hunter Stadium.

Following a first half that saw Darlington suffer a handful of setbacks on special teams, the Tigers reset themselves at halftime and overcame a 10-7 deficit, mixing strong defense and consistent offense.

“We came out early after halftime,” Darlington coach Tommy Atha said. “There weren’t any major adjustments that we needed to make. We just needed to adjust how we were playing.”

Quarterback Brad Butler ignited the fuse on offense for the Tigers in the second half as he finished with 115 yards rushing and two touchdowns in the Region 6-A game. On defense, Darlington’s Grant Moss supplied some power to compliment red-zone interceptions by Logan Rice and Will Mathis.

“I’m proud of the way the defense stood up in the second half,” Atha said. “We didn’t play well on special teams tonight and that’s something we try to pride ourselves on and we’re going to get that fixed.”

Quarterback Trevor Brown led the Lions (4-3, 1-2) and finished 11 of 21 for 163 yards passing. However, Darlington was able to contain the running game for most of the night.

“We just made too many mental mistakes,” Christian Heritage coach Preston Poag said. “We’ve got to learn from that. We played well at times. We knew all week we could play with them but you can’t make all of those mistakes and win.”

Darlington (4-2, 2-0) was put into a tough spot immediately as the opening kickoff by Christian Heritage’s Andrew McEntyre went low and bounced off of the back of a Darlington player as he turned to set up the block. Will Fischer was there for the Lions and they took possession at the Darlington 48-yard line.

Facing fourth-and-long a few plays later, Christian Heritage punted but the ball went through Chandler Duggan’s arms near the 10 and rolled up to the three before the Lions recovered it.

Brown found Nich Bartley in the end zone on fourth-and-goal with 6 minutes, 8 seconds left in the first quarter and the extra point by Michael McKinney was good to give Christian Heritage a 7-0 lead.

“My hats off to Christian Heritage,” Atha said. “They came in and they played their tails off. They outplayed us in a lot of areas and, fortunately, we were able to respond.”

Click here to sign up to receive text alerts on your team.