By Lonnie Turner
The Dillon Wildcats inched a little closer to Coach Jackie Hayes’ 300th win Friday night with a 24-7 win over the Marlboro County Bull Dogs, but it wasn’t as easy as the final score indicated. It took two fourth quarter touchdowns to ice the game that was tied early in the third quarter.
The Dillon game, much like Clemson and South Carolina, was decided with final quarter heroics. The Tigers scored two second half touchdowns to pull away from an up-start Boston College team that kept pretty even with Clemson through three quarters and the Gamecocks won on a late field goal over Louisiana Tech.
The Wildcats and Bull Dogs defenses fought on an even keel in the first half with the Wildcats making a 66-yard scoring drive that took 13 plays before Zareon Hayes was called in to score from a yard out from the Wildcat formation. Ahmad Dawad hit his first of three extra point kicks to give the Cats a 7-0 lead that would last until three minutes into the third period.
Jalen Williams, who, by the way, has corrected the media with the spelling of his name to Jaillan instead of Jalen, rushed ten times in the first half for only 37 yards, but turned up after burners in the second to finish the evening with 185 yards on 23 carries. He carried only nine times on the scoring drive for 18 yards, but sophomore quarterback Jay Lester was the workhorse of the drive carrying five times for 35 yards and threw three pass completions for another 35 yards before Hayes scored his 8th rushing touchdown of the season. “Jalen gave a tremendous effort all game tonight breaking tackles. His running helped us to win the game for sure,” said Coach Jackie Hayes, whose teams won for the 296th time in his coaching career in Dillon. “We had to make some key adjustments in our blocking assignments at halftime and the offensive line played much better in the second half.”
Bull Dog fullback Tavoris Ingram started to throw his 6-foot, 230 pound body around after the break and led the Dogs to a tying touchdown on a 71-yard drive to start the third quarter. He rushed three times in the drive for 18 yards to set up the lone Bull Dog touchdown that he ran in from 17 yards out. The Wildcats helped them along picking up two late hit out of bounds penalties. “We’ve got to work to get those personal fouls cleared up. You can’t win the big games down the road with so many personal foul penalties.” The Wildcats committed four personal fouls in the game that helped keep some Marlboro County drives alive.
The Wildcats followed the Bull Dogs tying score on the next drive going 65 yards on 10 plays to the Marlboro 4 and settled for a 21-yard field goal from Ahmad Dawad, his first of the season, to get the lead back, 10-7.
“We made a lot of mistakes in the game,” said a dejected Dean Boyd. We were down there on the one yard line after they took the 10-7 lead and we could have gone up 14-10, but a delay penalty and then a false start on the next play forced us to try a field goal for the tie.”
Zach Rogers missed on the field goal attempt from 32 yards out when his kick sailed off to the left of the goal post.
The Wildcats put together a scoring drive following the missed field goal starting at the 19 with Williams carrying five times for 55 yards and a key run by Lester to the 4 gave Zareon Hayes a chance to put six more points on the scoreboard out of the Wildcat. It was his ninth TD of the season.
After forcing a three and out series, Williams ran 36 yards up the middle for the final score of the game and Dawad sealed it with his third extra point kick.
The Dillon “Nasty Cat” defense, as South Carolina Sports Report editor Billy Baker named them many years back, turned in another solid performance with four more quarterback sacks to extend that number to fifteen for the season. Junior outside linebacker Shamar McCollum had two to give him a total of 3-1/2, just a half sack behind team leader, fellow junior defensive end Shakai Jeanti. The defense recorded seven tackles for losses and defensive back Ty’Quan Porter pulled down his seventh interception of the season. Junior linebacker Dray Thompson took over the tackle lead with ten stops including nine solo take-downs. McCollum has 31 total tackles and Thompson’s number now is 32.
The defense allowed only 45 total yards in the first half and finished giving up 164 with just 80 on the ground. Quarterback Elijah Blair completed 7 of 17 attempted passes for 85 yards.
The Wildcats will hit the road for only the second time next week as they travel to take on the Warriors of Waccamaw High School at Pawley’s Island.
