Louisa, Ky — Paintsville ( 1-0 ) erased an early ten point deficit to beat Lawrence Co. ( 0-1 ) 48-17 Friday night in the season opener for both teams at Luke Varney Jr. Memorial Stadium.
Lawrence Co. opened up the scoring on a nifty 26 yard touchdown run by Baden Gillispie and SJ Lycans booted his first ever PAT to make it 7-0 with 8:16 to go in the first quarter.Ethan Moore blocked a Tiger punt and Lycans nailed a 26 yard field goal with 4:37 to make it 10-0 Dawgs.
Paintsville didn’t pick up a first down in the first quarter as the Bulldog defense was on point forcing three punts and two turnovers before the Tigers roared back and scoring 48 unanswered points and controlling the game for three quarters.
Paintsville outscored Lawrence Co. 21-0 in the second quarter on a John Walker Phelps 44 yard run, Jake Hyden 7 yard run and a Hyden to Nick Keeton 34 yard strike with 4 seconds to go before half that was a back breaker for the Bulldog faithful. Tiger kicker Seth Trader made all 3 PAT’s and the visitors led 21-10 at Halftime.
In the third quarter the Tigers added 20 more points on Hyden’s 38 yard scamper, Phelps’ 1 yard plunge and 30 yard interception return to make it 41-10 going to the fourth.
In the final stanza Zach Thompson scored from 13 yards out for Paintsville before Gillispie found pay dirt from 6 yards out and Lycans added the PAT to set the final score of 48-17.
Paintsville has beaten Lawrence Co. 3 straight years.
Bulldog Vanhoose missed his first LC game since 2001 because of shingles.
Gillispie led the Dawgs on the ground with 105 yards on 15 carries, Brandon Fitch 33 yards on 3 carries, Blue Fletcher and Brody Cantrell 28 yards, on 7 carries each, Trevor Young 11 carries for 19 yards, Ethan Moore 2 carries for 1 yard.
Gillispie was 1 of 6 for 15 yards and 2 INT’s.
Danny Hall 1 catch for 15 yards.
Lawrence Co. turned the ball over 7 times.
Brody Cantrell recovered a fumble and intercepted a pass.
Lawrence Co. Head Coach Alan Short
COACH’S COMMENTS
“… Not taking anything away from Paintsville but early on I thought we had them on the ropes a little bit and we killed ourselves with stupid little penalties like offsides and false starts.”
“… The touchdown right before half you obviously don’t want to give that up especially a deep ball, but the Keeton kid made a play.”
looks to me like Paintsville adjusted and we didn’t
KAG