There wasn’t a lot of difference between Lake and Newton County on the football field Friday night.
The difference was a converted two-point conversion by the Hornets late in the game that gave them an 8-7 win over the Cougars to cap off a six-team jamboree.
Both coaches agree that their teams played hard, both saw areas for improvement and both found some things that needed correcting.
Newton County got the opening kick and put together its best drive of the game, scoring on a short run midway through the first.
“I thought we came out and played hard,” Newton County coach Bobby Bass said. “We put together a good drive to start the game and I was glad to see that. But then we hit a lull there in the second quarter. Maybe we were a little overconfident, maybe we were a little tired. The reason we play these things are to see what we need to work on. We saw some things we need to work on and will correct that.”
As Bass enters his second season, he has said repeatedly that he wants the Cougars to be more physical and more fundamentally sound, something that showed on the field on Friday night.
“We are getting there as far as being physical,” Bass said. “We are not as physical as I want us to be but we are getting there and make progress. I can live with that as long as we are getting there and making progress.”
After Newton County took the 7-0 lead, the Lake offense struggled while the defense got its footing and held its ground.
“We didn’t look good at all in the first quarter,” Lake coach Tate Hanna said. “We didn’t do anything well in the first quarter. We came out sluggish on both sides of the football. We didn’t get off the field on defense on third down like we need to and allowed them too many conversions. I don’t expect us to have that kind of slack when we have this many seniors out there. We have to show up every game and be ready to go.”
Late in the game, the Hornets went to their passing game and turned sophomore quarterback Brady McGee loose. McGee eventually got loose on the perimeter and made a cut back that resulted in a 50-yard run to put the Hornets deep in Newton County territory. McGee finished off the drive with a 5-yard run. The Hornets converted the two-point conversion to take the 8-7 lead.
“I was real proud of Brady McGee,” Hanna said. “We made some plays that we haven’t been able to make in the past. He made some plays with his legs that was the difference for us. He is just a playmaker. I don’t care if it’s football, baseball, basketball or badminton, he just makes plays. He is a player in anything he does. He works his tail off. People don’t realize how fast he is. That play wasn’t designed to do that but he just made a play and that’s what we have been missing.”
