The Newton Tigers saw its chance for a second win slip away on Friday night.
Southeast Lauderdale used a 90-yard interception return in the fourth quarter to take an 8-0 win over Newton.
Newton falls to 1-3 on the season and will play at Leake County on Friday night.
Second-year coach Jeffrey Crosby said his Tigers let one get away in a winnable game.
“It’s a game I thought that we had a chance to win and could have woke up being 2-2,” Crosby said. “We just couldn’t get anything going on offense. It was going to come down to somebody making a special play and Southeast was the one who eventually made it. You can’t win a game when you make a lot of mistakes. We let a team that hadn’t won a game hang around and we let them beat us. They are in the same boat as we are and were just trying to get a win. They capitalized on the mistakes, and we didn’t.”
Newton had four first-half possessions and went three and out on the first three and lost a fumble on the fourth one as the game was tied at 0-0 at the half.
On its first drive of the second half, Newton had a pair of big plays but lost a fumble at the Southeast 10. Newton lost a fumble on its next drive and put together another good drive late in the third. But threw an interception that Southeast returned 90 yards for a touchdown with 10:12 left in the game. The try for two was good and Southeast led 8-0.
Newton fumbled on its next drive and turned it over on downs on its last.
“Defensively, I thought we played lights out,” Crosby said. “We took the ball from them several times. We had four fumble recoveries and made them punt six times. But we fumbled five times and had the pick six. You can’t win a game when you handle the ball like that. It was just a matter of who took advantage of the mistakes first.”
Newton had 171 yards of total offense. Tazayvion Townsend was 2-of-3 passing for 47 yards with one interception. He also rushed for 98 yards on 15 carries. Jayden Tillman had one catch for 31 yards.
On defense, Jimare Kincaid had 14 tackles while Allen Roberts had 12. Jamarian Brown had eight tackles while Kevin Davis had seven stops. Jalis Hughes and Jeremiah Caston had six tackles while J’Marcus Holder, Derek Moore and Odell Williams had five tackles. Hughes had three sacks while Kevin Davis had 2.5 sacks. Holder also had a fumble recovery.
