Bentonville routs Cabot in the shade
BENTONVILLE — What Nathan Lyons couldn’t do through the air Friday night, he took care of by running.
The combination proved to be a lights-out performance by Bentonville’s senior quarterback. Lyons threw for a pair of first-half touchdowns, then ran for two more scores in the second half as the Tigers claimed a 31-6 victory over Cabot in Class 7A quarterfinal action at Tiger Stadium.
Lyons’ passing numbers weren’t overwhelming, completing just 9 of 20 for 142 yards. However, he finished with 9 carries for 176 yards, including an 83-yard scamper for the game’s final score with 3:33 remaining.
“Sometimes you just have to find out what’s working,” Lyons said. “We struggled through the air a little bit, but I give our offensive line a lot of credit. That’s a very physical defense, but we brought it to them.”
The Tigers (9-2), who have now reached the semifinals eight consecutive years, had only 39 yards total offense through the first 1½ quarters. Bentonville did have a second-and-goal situation from the Panthers’ 6 before a penalty and a quarterback sack pushed the Tigers back to the 27, and Sam Younger’s 44-yard field-goal try was wide right with 1 second left in the first quarter.
That all changed after Bentonville’s defense stuffed Cabot tailback Tadariyan Rogers for no gain on a fourth-and-1 play at the Tigers’ 44. Two plays later, Lyons delivered the deep pass to an open Kam’Ron Mays-Hunt for a 54-yard touchdown with 5:18 before halftime.
“I talked to Nathan after about the second possession, and I told him it was time to flip the switch and make some plays,” Bentonville Coach Jody Grant said. “He most definitely did that.
“He was just trying to make a play and get the ball to our playmakers. Obviously, they were doing things with Kam, but those are plays we have to make, truthfully.”
Oddly enough, the southwest bank of lights at Tiger Stadium went dark right after the touchdown pass, but play continued. Bentonville struck again on its next possession with a 10-play, 97-yard drive, capped by Lyons’ 21-yard touchdown pass to Harrison Campbell with 27 seconds before halftime.
The Panthers (6-6) scored on their opening drive of the second half with a Cody Skinner 4-yard quarterback keeper, but Bentonville needed just 69 seconds to respond. With the bank of lights still out, the Tigers used the darker area and their black jerseys to their advantage with a 44-yard run by Lyons, who scored three plays later on a 15-yard run with 6:35 left in the third quarter.
“We just decided we were running to the dark side of the field,” Grant said. “With the lights out, it doesn’t hurt Cabot that much because they don’t throw the ball that much. We thought we would give them a dose of their own stuff.”
Bentonville’s defense shifted from its normal 3-4 alignment to a five-man front in order to stop Cabot’s Dead-T offense and held the Panthers to under 200 yards rushing. It also stopped Cabot four times on fourth-down situations — three of them inside Tigers’ territory and the last one just inches from the goal line with 5:33 remaining.
“The Dead-T is a hard scheme to stop when you don’t ever see it,” Grant said. “And these kids don’t even know what it is. We had to basically explain it to them. They hadn’t even heard of it.”