Key plays haunt Wildcats in loss at Lake Hamilton
EL DORADO - El Dorado's defense wasn't even on the field when Lake Hamilton scored two of its touchdowns Friday. Still, defensive coordinator Justin Wylie felt the Wildcats' defenders could've done more to prevent the 27-21 road loss in the 6A-West opener.
The Wildcats showed improvement against the tricky, double-slot offense but Wylie was perturbed that the Wolves were able to run off the final few minutes off the clock.
The Wolves were 2-for2 on fourth down conversions, including a critical fourth-and-1 on the final clock-killing drive. On its fourth quarter, go-ahead drive, Lake Hamilton converted a third-and-5, a third-and-1 and a thirdand-goal from the 3.
"I think they got every fourth down conversion. They got every one of them. We've got to stop people on fourth down. We can't give up a fourth down conversion. When we really needed a stop, we didn't get it and that's disappointing. That's why we didn't win the game," said Wylie.
For the first time this season, El Dorado didn't force a turnover. Lake Hamilton had two fumbles, including a 12-yard loss on a bad pitch but managed to retain possession each time.
"Looking at the film, if the ball bounces one more time, we've got four guys there looking to scoop and score.
The ball just didn't bounce our way that time. We had an interception hit us and we didn't catch that one. That would've been big," said Wylie.
"Give them credit, they didn't put it on the turf many times."
Defensively, El Dorado held the Wolves to 201 yards on 51 rushing attempts and 21 yards through the air on 3-of-5 passes.
Junior middle linebacker Mon-Trae Marshall had a season-high 25 tackles, including eight unassisted. Lake Tucker had six tackles with a forced fumble, a tackle for loss, and a quarterback harrass. Donovan Walter had 10 tackles, including a tackle for loss and three quarterback pressures.
"He did a better job of reading his keys and playing fast this week. I thought he played well," Wylie said of Marshall. "Lake Tucker didn't light up the stat sheet but he played a good ball game. He did what we asked him to do. He was physical and I thought he played well.
"Donovan Walter did some good things. He did what he's being coached to do."
Johnathan Hall had 11 tackles. Corey Cox had eight tackles with a tackle for loss. Bishop Foster had four tackles with one pass breakup. Ja'Kal Wade and Peyton Perry each had four tackles. Destin Miller had
three.
"We played a lot better against the double-slot this week than we did last week. We were a lot more disciplined as far as our keys and reads. We played more physical," said Wylie.
Going back to the key stops at key times, the Wolves moved quarterback Dafavioun Haywood to a running back position on their final scoring drive and pitched it to him to convert both the third-and-5 and the thirdand-goal from the 3.
"They had shown putting the quarterback in the fullback position and tossing him the ball. They had shown that one time in week one. But, they had not shown the shifting, moving the receivers over. They hadn't shown shifting the tight end from one side to the other," said Wylie. "We didn't do a good job of adjusting. We were in man coverage and the guys shifted over and we didn't move over like we should have."