Call it a good sign, some early adversity met with success. Orange County was playing without its starting center Carter Rickett after he was injured on the second offensive play for the Hornets, one that ended with a fumble. After a poor snap that resulted in another turnover on the next drive, Orange soon found itself in a 3-0 and instead of running its offense out of the shotgun, an adjustment was made to put the Hornets quarterback duo of Caleb Clenney and Matt James under center. With the way the Hornets defense played all night, that’s all the was needed. Behind that defense, one that was in Spotsylvania’s backfield all game, and then the running back duo of Trevon Smith and DeAngelo Hunt getting rolling from the second quarter on, Orange was able to cruise to a 33-3 win in front of a packed house at Porterfield Park.
“We’re in a situation where we’re trying to get the ball rolling, get a positive spin,” said Orange coach Jesse Lohr. “Our motto is ‘make every day count, win the day.’ We have to learn how to deal with this. Learn how to win, how to act when we’re winning. What was good to see was when the adversity hit, we actually grew up and just went through the next guy mentality.”
Getting the ball in Smith and Hunt’s hands proved difficult early, but once it happened, the Orange offense exploded. On the Hornets third possession Hunt broke off a 48-yard touchdown run to give his team the lead with nine minutes to play in the second quarter. It took just the one play to get the ball rolling for Lohr, Hunt and company, as after that, it was all Orange, all night.
“The first play when I got the ball I fumbled, I’ll admit it, it happened,” Hunt said. “I thought I was down and getting face masked, but hey, this offense is too talented not to score. We’ve got this defense (behind us). We are just too talented to be turning the ball over, not scoring. So we got on it.”
Just a few minutes later the Hornets defense gave the offense excellent field position and Smith and Hunt were quickly on the goal line. With 4:33 until the break, Hunt crashed in for a 1-yard touchdown and suddenly things were bright with the score at 13-3 for Orange.
“When you’ve got two backs that can do what they do, our line was able to give them time, a chance to get to the linebackers,” Lohr said. “It’s hard to take them down. Before you know it they get 3-4-5 yards and then fall down for 6-7-8. We’ve got to get better overall offensively though because there are other teams that will make us do different things”
The Hornets defense came up big on the Knights last possession of the half. Spotsylvania marched into the redzone and with time expired, Darius Minor hauled in an interception in the endzone. Minor brought the return out and made it to midfield before finally getting bounced out of bounds to end the half on another high note for Orange.
“I’m proud, proud of this defense,” Lohr said. “They didn’t allow a score. They moved the ball and it was a bend but don’t break style but we played so well defensively. Overall this was a good win.”
The Hornets cashed in on a long drive with Smith punching in a 1-yard carry to make it 20-3. Then when the Knights fumbled the ensuing kickoff, James made a defense over-zealous on stopping the run pay, as he hit Elijah Smoot from 34-yard out on a pass to make it 26-3. That wasn’t it for the Orange passing game, which showed some nice second half flare. With 8:18 to play, Clenney hit Smith on a nice screen pass on an all out blitz and the running back housed it from 24 yards out to wrap up the scoring at 33-3.
“I though both quarterback threw the ball well but we could have had a couple more scores because we dropped the ball,” Lohr said. “It happens though.”
Spotsylvania threatened to score its lone touchdown of the game late in the fourth with Orange’s second stringers in on defense. However, Corey Champion was able to haul in a redzone interception to end the threat and allow Orange to essentially run out the clock.
On the night Hunt had 132 yards on 11 carries and two touchdowns while Smith had 13 attempts for 83 yards to go with his 24 yards receiving.
Orange (2-1) will get a short week as it hosts Powhatan on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
