Both Charleston and West Tallahatchie suffered close home losses Sept. 2 — Charleston in a 24-22 defeat at the hands of North Pontotoc, and West Tally in a 14-8 overtime loss to O'Bannon.
Following are some additional comments made by head coaches.
CHS HEAD COACH LaDON TAYLOR:
"I thought [our players] fought hard, they competed, but there were just some mental mistakes that we made that we have to clean up. Obviously, those mental mistakes were the difference in the game — big plays here or there that we felt like we should have made that we just didn't make. That's going to happen. The kids are going to have those nights where they miss some plays that they normally make."
"When you're playing a really good, well-coached 4A football team like North Pontotoc, you have to make sure that you take advantage of every opportunity."
"We lost one, but it's not the end of the world. We're going back to the drawing board, we're going to get ready for the next task and see if we can get it done."
WTHS HEAD COACH SHANE HARGETT:
"We game-planned great. We had a good plan going into the game. Everything we tried to do was open. We had some good looks. We just didn't execute."
"We turned the ball over seven times. We had two interceptions. We fumbled nine times and got a couple of them back on our own."
"We should have won that game at least 40 points. We just missed wide-open passes, we dropped a couple. You can't beat anybody [turning the ball over]."
"It was one of those games where if you play 10 times, you win nine of them. But we just played terrible. We didn't execute anything."
"We're going to use it to get better. Like I told them, it's like an NFL exhibition. Nothing counts until we play region."
"We've got to figure out some personnel decisions, because we're having to play kids in positions they're not comfortable with. That could have contributed a little bit to some of the turnovers — just miscommunication. It contributed a whole with all those wide-open passes we missed. But we'll be all right."
