Daviess County suffered a rough 47-7 defeat against Henderson in their district matchup.
Henderson was the first to score with about a 15-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter.
The Panthers had trouble getting things into rhythm on offense. They encountered some troubles with penalties in the first half which put them on the backfoot of the game to start out.
In the second quarter, Henderson moved the ball upfield into field goal range before they were forced to a fourth down. The Colonels went for the field goal attempt, but a false start flag on Daviess County called back the attempt and pushed Henderson up just enough to give them the confidence to go for it. They forced the ball through the Panthers line and scored to take the score to 14-0 for the Colonels at halftime.
Daviess County struggled to contain the Henderson offense in the third quarter. The Colonels got to the goal line and forced the ball into the endzone to extend their lead to 21-0 early in the third quarter.
The Panthers struggled to make moves upfield on offense and gave up an interception late in the quarter to put Henderson near the 40 yard line. Henderson went for the field goal attempt from about 44 yards out, but the snap was fumbled and Daviess County managed to force a turnover on downs after Henderson nearly secured a first down on the play.
Henderson scored again before Daviess County found the endzone. The Panthers struggled to get momentum on offense until late in the fourth quarter when a deep pass landed them on the one yard line. Jackson Lee finished the drive with a rushing touchdown to put the Panthers on the board. DCHS head coach said that getting momentum on offense has been an uphill battle for the team all season.
“It’s been an uphill battle for us offensively all year,” he said. “We were able to string some things together, so I think we know what we can do, we just have to execute bettter. Ultimately, the opportunites were there and we schemed them and knew what was available. We just got to win those one-on-one battles and we didn’t do that.”
The Colonels scored two more times after that to bring the final score to 42-7.
Gatlin Maysey had multiple carries for big gains of yards in the Panther’s final drive, but they couldn’t find the endzone for a final touchdown before the fulltime whistle.
The mistakes and penalites by the Panthers are an obstacle that head coach Matt Brannon said the team needs to work on before they take on McCracken next week.
“We’ve got to sustain drives, that’s key for us,” he said. “The run game was there. We had the opportunities to get it, it’s just we’d get a second or third and short, and next thing you know it’s a bad snap or a holding call. We’ve got to clean that up. We’ve got the opportunity to compete against McCracken and host the playoff game next week. That’s got to be our focus, so we got to move on from this and go to the next on.”
