NITRO ENDS DOZEN YEARS OF FUTILITY
AGAINST SA
Publication:
Published: 09/20/1997
Page: P1B
Headline: NITRO ENDS DOZEN YEARS OF FUTILITY AGAINST SA
Byline: MICHAEL DAILEY
DAILY MAIL SPORTSWRITER
The Nitro student dangling
from the goal post said it all.
The Wildcats' football team
had just ended a 12-year losing streak to
crossriver rival
little built-up frustration.
The goalpost survived the
assault, but Nitro still owned a 23-9
victory over the Red Dragons 23-9 at
"This is the biggest
win since I've been coaching here." said
second-year Nitro Coach Robert "Little" Burdette. "This is a big
win
for us because they have beaten us so handily over the past few years
that the rivalry was becoming one-sided. Hopefully, we started to
equal things out tonight."
One statistic that Nitro
did "equal out" was its run/pass ratio.
The normally pass-happy Wildcats
rushed 41 times for 166 yards, mostly
from the wishbone formation, while completing just 4-of-10 passes for
just 91 yards.
"We thought we could
run the ball on them." said Burdette. "We felt
that if we ran a sweep and disguised it as an option, we could be
successful. That worked pretty well for us tonight."
Senior running back Zack
Collins led Nitro's ground assault with 83
yards on 23 carries.
"We ran the ball
pretty well tonight," said Collins, "but you've got
to credit this win to our defense. They are the best that I've seen
around this season."
The Nitro defense was
indeed impressive.
In improving to 3-1 on the
season, the Wildcats' defense limited SA to
just 54 rushing yards and intercepted four Red Dragon passes, one of
which was returned 71 yards for a touchdown by defensive back Isaac
Eastwood.
"We know that they (
Burdette, "So we felt that if we could force them into throwing the
ball, we could force a few mistakes.
"The bottom line is
that we won the battle of the line of scrimmage on
defense and that forced them into the passing game, which led to the
interceptions."
Along with Eastwood's
interception return, Nitro scored on TD runs of
12 yards and 1 yard by Chris Martin and Collins, respectively and a
40-yard field goal by Barry Dickerson.
SA (1-3) scored on a Jeremy
Nelson 22-yard field goal and a late
32-yard scoring strike from Jermaine Leftwich to Chris Darcus.
SA coach Greg Cyrus was
disappointed, but not ready to write off the
rest of the season.
"We're
disappointed," said Cyrus. "We had some miscommunications
offensively that hurt us, but we'll just go to work and try to correct
them.
"The only problem I
have with our kids is that they drop their heads
awfully quick when something negative happens on the field. Our heads
dropped tonight after of couple of big pass plays against us and we
were done, the kids just seemed to lose their intensity."
One bright spot for SA was
the play of junior tight end Jason Rader.
Rader, just back from an
unofficial visit to the
"That Rader kid is one
heck of a ballplayer." said Burdette. "We won't
face a kid any better than him all year long, I'll guarantee you
that."