Ask any coach with French Camp on the schedule, and they will tell you they don’t know what to expect out of the Panthers and coach Nathan Wright.
That was certainly the case for the Winona Christian Stars on Friday night.
French Camp used a balanced offense and took a solid 45-18 win over WCS on Friday night in the season opener for both teams.
While the Stars had played in a jamboree and a scrimmage, the Panthers played their first game on Friday night.
“The biggest thing was going in blind,” WCS coach Junior Graham said. “They changed up completely from what they did last year, so we went in blind and just didn’t play well. They are a solid squad and have a quarterback who can really throw it and run the football. And they have good skill guys around him.”
The Stars struggled on both sides of the football as they rushed for just 92 yards on 28 carries while throwing for 86 yards on 8-of-23 passing for two touchdowns and two interceptions.
“We just never got anything going offensively,” Graham said. “We went in thinking we would be able to do some things up front and those things never materialized. We just couldn’t keep the offense on the field and kept on giving up big play after big play on defense.”
While the Winona offense was struggling, the French Camp offense was hitting on all cylinders. After a safety to open up the scoring, the Panthers scored two first-quarter touchdowns and led 16-0 at the end of the first.
The Stars finally got on the board in the second quarter as Latham Hill hit Choyce Diffey on a 15-yard touchdown pass. The PAT failed and the Stars trailed 23-6 at the half.
“We gave up too many big plays,” Graham said. “That had not been our MO at all. When we sold out to stop the run, our lack of discipline showed and we gave up a long touchdown pass to the tight end and a long run to the quarterback.
“It was one of those things, if we had known they were going to run two tights the whole game, we would have done some things different in the box on defense than we did.”
The Stars scored once in the third quarter on a 22-yard touchdown pass to Diffey from Hill. The try for two failed and Winona trailed 30-12 at the end of the third.
The Panthers added scores on a 35-yard pass and a 55-yard pass while Holland Ingram scored the Stars last touchdown on a 2-yard run. The Panthers ended up with 413 yards of total offense with 222 yards rushing and 191 passing.
“There were some positives, just wasn’t many of them,” Graham said. “Other than the bad snap in the first, our punting game was solid. We caused a fumble on defense and our kickoff and kick return teams were drastically better than they were last year. I thought the defensive side was solid, we just put them in a position where they weren’t going to be successful because of the scheme.”
Ingram led the Stars in rushing with 55 yards on 12 attempts. Ingram also had seven tackles on defense while Colby Marlow, Blake Marlow and Ben Pinkard each had six tackles apiece.
The Stars will look to get their first win of the season when they take on Ethel on Friday night.
The Tigers lost 35-0 to McAdams in their season opener.
“It will be two teams licking their wounds,” Graham said. “We will have to see how far we have come. I think they will be faster than us. They have two big wideouts who look like they can run. They lost to a solid McAdams squad but the score doesn’t really indicate how close the game was. Ethel moved the ball but gave up some big plays on defense. We will have our hands full with their athleticism.”
