H.S. FOOTBALL: South Side strong in all phases

SOMERVILLE – South Side High football coach Brian Moore said his team did a good job of making sure it didn’t allow Fayette-Ware do much on either side of the ball.

The Hawks were apparently successful at that since they beat the Wildcats 40-8.

“Our guys did a good job, especially our defense,” Moore said. “Fayette-Ware came in with a lot of speed, a lot more than us.

“And our guys did a good job of doing their jobs and staying where they needed to stay and bringing them down when we needed them to.”

Moore said one key to keeping Fayette-Ware from scoring until the fourth quarter was putting pressure on the quarterback.

“Their quarterback is good, but he becomes more average when you put pressure on him,” Moore said. “He loses a lot of the touch on his throws, so we obviously wanted to get our guys back there and affect him as much as they could.”

Offensively, Moore said the Hawks did a better job of running the ball than passing, but quarterback Cade Willingham did come up with a couple of touchdown passes.

“The passes we did try were some underneath stuff, because we weren’t going to burn anybody on their team,” Moore said.

The biggest key for the Hawks, according to Moore, was turnovers.

“We were plus-3 or plus-4 in turnovers, and that’s how you really beat a team that’s that much faster than you as Fayette-Ware was,” Moore said. “We intercepted two or three passes and picked up a couple of fumbles.

“We had a good night, and we’ll try to keep it going next week.”

The Hawks travel to Selmer next week to take on McNairy Central in both teams’ Region 7-3A opener.

“McNairy has made some changes offensively, so our defense has got to prepare well and play as well as it did tonight,” Moore said.