Hillbillies earn mercy-rule win over Panthers

It only took one quarter for the Ozark Hillbillies to take a commanding lead that they would ride all the way to a victory in the team’s 42-13 win over the Clarksville Panthers on Friday night.

“We had a bad taste left in our mouth from last week,” Ozark coach Jeremie Burns said. “They came back and played super hard against a big rival.”

Ozark lost to Booneville last week after giving up three touchdowns to the Bearcats in the fourth quarter.

The Hillbillies posted 21 points in the first quarter on their way to a dominate offensive performance that would force a mercy rule game in Ozark. Tyler Sanders scored three touchdowns for the Hillbillies to pace the offense while quarterback Dawson Dietz threw for two more scores and ran for one.

On Ozark’s last touchdown drive to force the mercy rule, Sanders busted a 23-yard rush to get the Hillbillies inside the red zone, but a holding penalty almost threatened to kill the Hillbillies’ drive. Junior Bryant Burns, who had dropped a pass on the drive earlier, reeled in a throw from Dietz for their second touchdown connection of the night.

Clarksville struggled to match Ozark’s speed on offense, but penalties on the part of the Hillbillies plagued the team the whole night, even setting up a Panther touchdown.

Ozark had moved the ball all the way down to the Clarksville 3, but the Hillbillies found themselves in a second-and-goal situation from 22 yards

out after a series of holding penalties called against them. Clarksville forced a fumble on the next play, which sophomore Broderick Robinson returned for a 78-yard score for the team’s only touchdown in the first half.

“It’s early here in these nonconference games, so that’s what we want to see and be able to fix those problems,” Burns said.

Clarksville coach Khris Buckner thought the defensive touchdown might have sparked some fight in the Panthers, but Sanders stifled any comeback effort after scoring on a 55-yard touchdown run on the first play of Ozarks’ drive.

“[Robinson] made a point in the game where we could have switched the momentum, but we didn’t capitalize after that and gave up the long run after that,” Buckner said.

Junior Colby Burkett breathed some life into Clarksville late in the third quarter after he capped off an impressive Panther drive with a 35-yard run to score the only offensive touchdown for the team.

Buckner did not mince words when talking about how his team played, calling the performance awful.

“We didn’t have a very good week of practice, and they just whooped us on the field,” Buckner said. “We were not executing like we should offensively.”