WEBB — The West Tallahatchie High School Choctaws improved to 3-0 on the campaign after their 36-6 slaying of the O’Bannon Greenwaves Friday night during the Raphael S. Davis Memorial Classic.
O’Bannon fell to 1-1 on the young season.
It was the first home game for the Choctaws, who are off to the program’s best start since 2016, when they won their first four games of the season en route to a 9-3 finish.
“We’ve been playing pretty good, protecting the ball,” said West Tally head coach Shane Hargett. “Just playing clean.”
West Tally committed their first turnover of the season Friday night, while O’Bannon had three turnovers.
The Choctaws did hit a sour note when junior wide receiver, running back and cornerback Jamerrius Johnson suffered a separated shoulder for the team’s first significant injury of the year.
“That injury bug, you always worry about that shoe falling, and it got us with one of our best offensive players,” said Hargett. “He’s going to be out at least this coming week, and more than likely the next week, too.”
Hargett said the Choctaws are “going to be OK, but we can’t afford many more of those injuries.”
Senior Isaac Day had another big outing for the Choctaws, scoring on 52-yard run in the first quarter, a 26-yard pass reception from quarterback Tristian Hill and a 72-yard kickoff return to open the second half.
“He had another phenomenal game!” said Hargett, who noted that Day accumulated more than 300 all-purpose yards running, receiving and returning kicks and punts.
In addition to the one touchdown pass, Hill scrambled for more than 100 yards and had two rushing touchdowns of 9 and 6 yards.
Game stats were unavailable.
“We’re efficient. Offensively, we’re much farther along than we were this time last year, in a lot better shape, and throwing the ball a lot better,” said Hargett. “Basically, we’re getting out of that one-dimensional look. We’re able to spread the field. We still run predominantly, but we throw the ball at least 30% of the time now.”
Hargett attributes the improved passing attack to the development of Hill.
“Tristian has come a long way as far as being able to read defenses and complete passes that we struggled to do last year,” he noted. “That means we’re softening up defenses. They can’t put nine or 10 up there to stop the run, because we have the ability to throw it over the top of them. That’s really helped us a lot.”
The coach did lament the team’s plethora of penalties in Friday night’s home opener at Choctaw Stadium.
“The one thing we have to do better is limit penalties. We had at least 150 yards of penalties,” including “eight or nine false starts,” he said.
Hargett blamed O’Bannon’s band sitting in the Choctaws’ bleachers rather than on the visitor’s side.
“We just couldn’t hear anything,” Hargett said. “We had to make adjustments to that at halftime and start going on some silent stuff.”
This week, West Tally visits Coahoma County. The Red Panthers are 1-1 after their 28-0 loss to Clarksdale High.
“Another 3A football team,” Hargett said of Coahoma County. “They moved the ball on Clarksdale pretty good up and down the field although they didn’t score.”
