Harvey Simpson
Cordele Dispatch
Cordele —
By HARVEY SIMPSON
Dispatch Sports Editor
CORDELE — Crisp Academy’s Wildcats treated their fans to a first varsity home game in two years Friday night but couldn’t deliver them a victory in the process, bowing 44-14 to Nathaniel Greene’s Patriots.
The loss was the second in as many starts for coach Jerry Breeden’s numbers-plagued squad that will be at home again this Friday to take on John Hancock Academy’s Rebels.
“I thought we played real well the first half as with the kids coming out fired up we were able to move the football and play pretty good defense,” Breeden said in his post-game analysis.
“The second half, though, it looked like a different team showed up for us as we let Nathaniel Greene get in there and
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pound us for 5-6 yards at a clip while repeatedly driving the ball downfield. Penalties and turnovers killed us, too, and those are two things we need to eliminate.”
Crisp got off to a good start, grabbing an 8-0 lead on James Bodrey’s 6-yard run and two-point conversion pass to Jeffrey Wessel.
After the visiting Patriots battled back for an 8-8 tie, the Wildcats regained the lead at 14-8 on Bodrey’s 20-yard swing pass to Chandler Bowen.
From that point on, though, all the scoring belonged to Nathaniel Greene which about two minutes before halftime went on top to stay with a touchdown and two-point conversion that made it 16-14 at the break.
The Patriots scored twice more in each of the last two quarters, with three of those scores coming after they had been set up in excellent field position by Wildcat fumbles they had recovered.
“Overall, I didn’t think we played as well this week as we did last week (in a season-opening 26-14 loss to Covenant Christian),” Breeden said. “We did have a better first half tonight, but in the second half we slipped back a little.
“What we’ve got to do now to get ready for the John Hancock game is to watch film on Monday and regroup so that we can pick things back up and play well for four quarters and not just two.”
One positive to come out of the loss to Nathaniel Greene, Breeden said, was that the Wildcats didn’t lose any players due to injury such as they did last week when Bodrey went down in the second quarter with a concussion that sidelined him for the rest of the night.
“If we can continue to stay healthy, I think we’ll be ready to play at our best by the time we get into region play,” Breeden said.
Score by Quarters
Nathaniel Greene 8-8-16-12 — 44
Crisp Academy 8-6-0-0 — 14
