The Plain Dealing Lions jumped out to an early lead and went on to defeat the Homer Pelicans 28-14 in a District 1-1A opener Friday night in Plain Dealing.
The Lions improved to 3-1 with their third straight victory. Plain Dealing has now matched its win total of last season. The Lions face Class 1A power Haynesville (4-0), which defeated Arcadia 40-12 in its district opener, Friday night in Haynesville.
“It wasn’t the prettiest game,” Plain Dealing coach James Thurman said of the Homer victory. “We had more penalties than I care to think about. But we did what we had to do to win.”
The Lions built a 22-0 lead. Homer scored with just 2 seconds left in the first half. The two-point conversion cut the lead to 22-8 at the break.
The Lions piled up around 300 yards rushing. They only attempted three passes resulting in an incompletion, an interception and a touchdown.
Shavolyea McKinney scored two touchdowns on short runs. Derreon Washington caught a 40-yard pass from Matt Sullivan. Keldrick Carper went 50 yards for a TD.
“They were giving us certain things and we were taking it,” Thurman said.
Plain Dealing punted only once. The Lions failed to convert one fourth-down situation and had the interception.
“Other than those three times we pretty much scored every time we had the ball,” Thurman said. “They ran the clock a lot too. They ran the ball a lot, kind of grinded out some drives and kind of kept the ball away from us a little bit.”
Penalties were of the most concern to Thurman.
“We had a lot of defensive penalties,” he said. “We jumped offsides a lot. Those are some of the things we’re going to have to clean up as we go along … some missed tackles.
“We’ve got a lot of young kids on defense. The defense stayed on the field a lot longer than they needed to tonight, but they played well in spots.”
— Russell Hedges, rhedges@bossierpress.com
