2 weeks Ago
STROM THURMOND 26, EMERALD 14 The Rebels came through with a win over Emerald on Homecoming night in the peach fields Friday. While Strom Thurmond cleaned up some areas of its game after a disappointing loss to North Augusta last week, head coach Andrew Webb said there’s room for improvement after the 26-14 win over the Vikings. The Rebels came out hot with a touchdown on the opening drive for the first lead of the night over the Vikings, a lead they would maintain for the rest of the game.
The first half was all junior quarterback Bri'Shaun Lee in the end zone after he kept the ball in the opening drive and then brought it home again before halftime. While the scoring was all done on the ground for the Rebels on Friday night, they saw some success in the air to get the ball downfield, including a 40-yard reception in the first play of the game. But Webb said they still have a lot of work to do in that department.
“Well, we hit some plays early, but there's still plays out there to be made that we're not making,” said Webb. “And Bri'Shaun probably gets as much criticism, plus he plays quarterback, it just comes with playing quarterback, he gets a lot of criticism. Bri'Shaun played really, really well.
He threw a lot of balls that were catchable and we didn’t catch them. He threw a lot of balls where, if he has time, he’s going to make a good throw and we’re not holding up the pass protection and we’ve got to be better at it.” The Vikings started to gain momentum offensively coming out of the half, marching downfield to score and cut the Rebels' lead in half.
Despite multiple plays made defensively to try and hold them off, including a broken-up pass from junior cornerback Jalin Collins in the end zone, Strom Thurmond only led by six going into the fourth quarter. Nine minutes and 15 plays later, the Rebels extended their lead after slowly but surely moving downfield to score. It was junior slotback Deonte Phillips who brought the ball two yards into the end zone to finish off the drive with a touchdown.
After a failed two-point conversion, Strom Thurmond led 19-7 with six minutes left in the game. “It was a bunch of guts,” Webb said. “Really, it was a bunch of guts.
We didn’t execute well in the first half again but that was a big drive, not just a big drive in this game but a big drive for our season. That’s a big drive for our program. Seriously, we had to answer the bell right there and our kids did.
It wasn’t anything fancy, it wasn’t any fancy play calling, it was just guts and our guys executed.” It only took Phillips two plays to bring it back to the house on the next offensive drive, carrying the ball 53 yards to score his second touchdown of the quarter. With under two minutes left in the game, Emerald quickly responded to get a touchdown back in 30 seconds.
“We were just trying to get a first down and run the clock out,” Webb said. “Deonte is just a really, really good football player and he popped one and scored. It wasn’t like we were trying to score, he just made a really, really good football play.
” After struggling with penalties and turnovers last week, Strom Thurmond only turned the ball over once on downs while forcing three turnovers on defense, one of which was an interception from junior cornerback Kaleb Simpkins right before the half. The Rebels continued to struggle against costly flags to break up their momentum throughout the game. “The thing that we have to improve the most on, on offense especially, is not shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties,” he said.
“We are killing ourselves with penalties. We had four drives in the first half, two of them we scored on, and two of them we put ourselves in first or second and 20 or longer because of the penalties, and it's really hard for us to overcome that. So we have to stop making penalties.
” With an undefeated Lincoln County team on the horizon, Webb said they’ll need to continue playing cleaner football and work on getting healthy ahead of next week and the start of region play. EM 0 0 7 7 -- 14 ST 6 7 0 13 -- 26 SCORING SUMMARY First Quarter ST – Bri'Shaun Lee 2 run (kick failed) 8:32 Second Quarter St – Lee 27 run (Orlando Rivera kick) 9:16 Third Quarter EM – Chris Dean 6 run (Kick) 2:22 Fourth Quarter ST – Deonte Phillips 2 run (conversion failed) 6:18 ST – Phillips 53 run (Rivera kick) 1:51 EM – Beau Hite 11 pass to Max Divibliss (Warner Wright kick) 1:20.
