Down 10 points at halftime to their bitter rivals, there was no way Loreauville football players Christopher Jones and Thomas Carter were going to let the Tigers lose to Catholic-New Iberia.
Jones led a defense that pitched a second-half shutout, and Carter’s touchdown run in the third quarter was the turning point as the Tigers rallied for a 12-10 win over the Panthers on Friday night in Loreauville.
“We were asleep in the second quarter,” Carter said. “We were down, we weren’t waking up — we knew we had to wake up and do something.”
It took until the midway point of the third quarter for the Tigers to finally wake up. They did with Carter’s touchdown run, which cut a 10-0 Catholic High halftime lead to 10-6 with about five minutes left in the the period.
Up to that point, Loreauville’s night was marked with fumbles, missed opportunities and frustrating penalties.
“We kept having our chances in the first half, but we kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” Loreauville coach Terry Martin said. “To be able to overcome all the mistakes, all the penalties that we had, I’m really proud of what the kids did tonight.”
Loreauville’s mistakes in the game were numerous.
The Tigers turned the ball over four times, had a Carter 53-yard touchdown run called back by not one but two penalties, kept two Catholic scoring drives alive by committing penalties and dropped an interception that surely would have been a pick-six.
“We just weren’t playing well and kept making mistakes,” Jones said.
Coming out of halftime, though, the Tigers finally found their footing.
Turning to its workhorse, Loreauville started running the ball in between the tackles.
“They kept giving me the ball, and I had to keep running it to help my team win,” Carter said.
“That’s kind of been our identity all year,” Martin said. “Thomas just had a good night running the ball.”
On defense, the Tigers were finally able to stop the Panthers’ running and passing attacks.
“We knew we could stop them,” Christopher’s brother Christian Jones said. “We just had to do it.”
And twice in the final four minutes of the game, Loreaville’s defense was able to stop Catholic to preserve the win.
“It’s a big win, but we have LCA next week,” Martin said. “We’ll find out at practice starting tomorrow how they’ll use this win tonight.”
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