The Scott Central Rebels were as good as advertised on Thursday night against the Lake Hornets.
And for 23-plus minutes, the Hornets were just as good.
Scott Central scored a late touchdown to end the first half and took advantage of some good second-half field position to take a 26-0 win over the Hornets on Thursday night at Lake.
The Rebels improve to 9-0 on the season and 3-0 in Division 4-4A play. Lake falls to 6-2 on the season and 1-1 in 4-2A play and will travel to undefeated Philadelphia this week.
For Hanna, it was a tough loss to swallow after his Hornets played one of their best halves of the season.
“Any time you lose a game 26-0, you are disappointed,” Hanna said. “But when you look at it, it was 6-0 at the half and should have been 0-0. I thought we played our tails off. I knew it was going to come to the point where we had to push them to the fourth quarter because they have more athletes than we do. I am proud of my guys and how hard they played. They were 1-9 last year and nobody expected them to be 6-2 at this point of the season. Nobody expected us to be in this ball game tonight. I suspect Jimbo (Nowell) is leaving right now thinking that Lake is on the rise and getting better.”
The Hornets got the opening kick and put together their best drive of the game, going nine plays and getting to the Scott Central 38 before a false start stalled the drive and forced a punt.
“That’s the thing, we hit them in the mouth on the first drive,” Hanna said. “That’s what we expected from our guys the whole game and it didn’t happen. We have to be able to put drives together and finish them. We aren’t a throwing team but have to figure out something we can do differently there. We just have to continue to get better.”
Scott Central responded with a 14-play drive that ended with a missed field goal attempt with 11:45 left in the first half.
The two teams then traded fumbles with Lake’s Zeke Chapman coming up with one for Lake to repel Scott Central deep into the Hornets’ territory.
With the Hornets unable to move the football, Scott Central finally got something going late in the half as T.J. Wash hit Ken Patrick on a 12-yard touchdown pass with two seconds left in the half. The PAT failed and Scott Central led 6-0 at the half.
The Rebels got the ball to begin the second half and picked up right where they left off and put together a 14-play, 56-yard scoring drive as Vontae McDonald scored on a 2-yard run with 4:24 left in the third. The PAT was good and Scott Central led 13-0.
The Lake offense struggle in the second, plagued with poor field position and short punts and were not able to pick up a first down in the second half.
“They were just killing us on offense,” Hanna said. “For us to win, we have to keep the defense off the field. I thought our defense did a spectacular job. I know they gave up 26 points, but when you go three and out every time on offense, the defense is going to wear out.”
The Rebels added two more scores in the fourth quarter as Scott Central used a six-play, 27-yard drive and a two-play, 32-yard drive to pull away from the Hornets.
The final stats showed Lake’s struggles on offense as they had just 10 yards rushing and 12 yards passing for 22 yards of total offense.
Seth Prestage led the Lake defense with 7.5 tackles while Zeke Chapman had 6.5 stops.
