Lake football coach Tate Hanna has said all along that Cornelius Mayers will likely be the fastest player on the field in most games.
That was certainly the case on Friday night.
The junior running back rushed for 243 yards and three touchdowns as he led the Hornets to a 34-20 over visiting Bogue Chitto.
The Hornets are now 1-1 on the season and will travel to Choctaw Central on Friday night.
Hanna said he thought his team got better as they grabbed their first win of the season.
“I think we are getting better but have a long way to get to where we want to be,” Hanna said. “We are playing better defensively and were lining up right. We still aren’t doing what we need to do up front, blocking the right people but it was some better than last week. If we can get the line going with Cornelius and Brady, I think we can be pretty good on offense. I’m proud of the progress and the effort. We just have to go get better this week.”
After a scoreless first quarter, the Hornets finally got on the board early in the second period as Mayers got free on a 26-yard touchdown run. The PAT failed and Lake led 6-0.
The Lake defense chimed in on the next series as Mayers took the ball from a Bogue Chitto back and raced 65 yards for a touchdown. The try for two failed and Lake led 12-0.
Bogue Chitto answered with an eight-play, 55-yard drive and cut the score to 12-7.
The Hornets added a late score as they took advantage of a short punt by the Bobcats. Brady McGee then hit Jadorian Pace on a 34-yard touchdown pass. Mayers ran it the two-point conversion and Lake led 20-7 at the half.
“I was proud of our receivers,” Hanna said. “If you look at them and how far they have come since the preseason, they have made a huge improvement. They have gotten a lot better.”
After turning the ball over on downs to pen the second half after a 12-play drive, lake used an interception by Pace to set up a score.
This time, Mayers scored on a 19-yard run and Frank Pazo’s PAT gave Lake a 27-7 lead.
After forcing a three-and-out on defense, Lake put its last points on the board as they went 85 yards in 10 plays has J.D. Evans scored on a 1-yard run. Pazo’s PAT was good and Lake led 34-7.
The Hornets had 403 yards of total offense with 329 rushing and 74 passing.
Mayers had another big game with 243 yards rushing on 29 carries while J.D. Evans has 46 yards on four carries. McGee had 35 yards on six carries.
“From the get-go, I’ve said every Friday night that he is going to be the fastest person on the field,” Hanna said. “We have got to get him the ball in space. But one thing that I am proud of is he has gotten a lot better at running between the tackles. I’m very proud of him. I think if we can get some things fixed up front, we can be dangerous on offense.”
McGee was 6-of-13 passing for 74 yards while Pace had three catches for 43 yards. Kris McClendon had two catches for 23 yards.
On defense, Cameron Hunt had eight tackles while Jalen Gray had 6.5 tackles. Evans had four tackles and five passes defended. Kalvin Dinkins had 4.5 tackles with a sack while East Tune also had four tackles. Mayers also had three tackles and a strip and score on defense while Pace also had an interception.
“They really weren’t able to do anything on offense,” Hanna said. “I think we did a better job of reading our guards and I was pleased with our corners. We changed our coverage and I was pleased with how we played that and hour our safeties played. We were able to play a lot of guys and are getting better. I thought our outside linebackers did a good job of stopping their outside game. They only really had one drive against the starters and we have to get better at getting off the field on third down. The more they play, the better we are going to get on defense.”
