Charlottesville coach Eric Sherry broke it down simply. His team is struggling to tackle on defense, and the most obvious reason for the problem is youth and inexperience. The Black Knights looked like they were going to make it a game with Robert E. Lee in the third quarter after a big touchdown pass from Mason Sherry to Rashad Davis. But two running plays later, the Leemen were celebrating a touchdown of their own. For the rest of the second half, Lee kept going back to that well, and as a result, came away with a 34-7 win.
“I said at the beginning that I won’t use it as an excuse but it’s the earmarks of the young team,” Eric Sherry said. “We stepped forward on special teams, stepped backwards on tackling. 7-0 at halftime, it probably should have been tied if we had executed properly. Effort level? We were fine. Execution wise, when you only execute 80 percent of the time, that 20 percent is really going to hurt us.”
Charlottesville’s defense was resilient to start the contest. The Black Knights had their best first half of the season so far, giving up just one touchdown to head into the break down by just seven points, a vast difference between the halftime score of its first two contests.
Lee took a 14-point lead to open the third quarter, but Charlottesville immediately responded with a big play. Quarterback Mason Sherry didn’t get a lot of time to throw down field with defenders in his face constantly batting down the ball, but when he found Davis in open space, it turned into the best moment on offense on the evening. Davis broke his short route to the left side of the field and streaked down the sideline to cut his team’s deficit in half.
Unfortunately for Charlottesville, it only took two Javon Chisley rushing attempts to make it 21-7. Lee scored on its next two following drives behind the legs of running backs Chisley, Eric McDavis and quarterback Dylan Horne and the Black Knights offense was unable to reach the redzone or endzone for the rest of the night.
“He’s a shifty kid, (Davis) is quick,” said Lee coach David Tibbs of his team’s response to Charlottesville lone score of the night. “We knew (Charlottesville) had speed and we respect that speed, but we had to tackle better. But that’s the thing. We were down by two touchdowns last week to Wilson, a good (Group A) team and we never quit and came back. We were better this week than that.”
While the defense struggled at times, both Daquan Jones and Dale Richardson continued to show promise at linebacker. Richardson was one of few that was able to make open field tackles and Jones’ blitzing on the edge all but eliminated the Leeman passing attack as he had three major tackles for a loss.
The Black Knights (3-0) head to Culpeper County next Friday at 7:30 p.m.
