By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
Bennettsville – Thank goodness it was just a jamboree.
That had to be thoughts that were echoing through the Falcon Nation after this past Friday’s 30-0 defeat to the Dillon Wildcats in just two quarters of play in the Dennis Miller Jamboree of Championship in Bennettsville.
“It’s exactly not what you want, but thing about it too is it is a process to build all year and it is disappointing to have a lackluster effort than what you had Tuesday night in a game type scrimmage,” Darlington head coach John Jones said. “We played 150 plays, didn’t play nowhere close to that many tonight, but the effort wasn’t there across the board and that reflects on me; that’s my fault and I have to take responsibility for that.”
Taking on the winner of five out of the last six 2A/3A state championships, Darlington was never able to get anything going, getting out matched, out manned and out played in mostly every facet of the game.
This is not written with the intention of making Darlington look bad as much as it is to just say how much further ahead Dillon is of the Falcons, and mostly everyone else for that matter.
After winning only three games in the last two years, the Falcons are going to have to clean up some aspects of their game in a hurry if they are going to surpass that win mark. Darlington’s schedule, non-region and region, are equally difficult and poor execution will result in a long season.
Against the Wildcats, Darlington struggled defensively to get off the field on third and fourth downs and offensively, constant missed assignments up front doomed the offense from the start.
“It doesn’t help you when you know the strength of your team is going to be the defense and your run game and you keep the defense on the field for all of these plays and your run game is not evident because you are missing assignments up front,” Jones said.
Darlington kicks off the regular season next week at home against Cheraw and will need to address these problems in a hurry if it is going to have any success against Braves or any other team that sits on the schedule.
Asked how he was going to go about trying to correct these problems Jones had a very simple and to the point solution.
“We just stay the course,” Jones said. “We stay the course; we stay the course.”
