By John Morgan, Sports Editor

“It was a sloppy night with all the rain.  And we played sloppy.  We came out with no intensity.  They came out and played hard.  It was their homecoming and they played hard.”  That was Coach Ernie Willingham’s description of his Panthers 34-performance in the first half in their 34-10 win over Section.

Collinsville actually opened the game with an impressive 17 play, 80 yard drive that took an amazing 8:03 off the clock.  The Panthers converted a fourth down and overcame a holding penalty to grab a 7-0 lead.  The drive featured Gerald Blakely who rushed nine times including seven yards for the TD.  On the night he had 152 yards rushing and receiving and had three touchdowns.

It looked as if the Panthers were going to grab complete control of the game when the immediately covered an onside kick and drove down the field.  Then the sloppy got involved.  Collinsville fumbled on the four yard line and Section’s Austin Lands recovered.  The game went back and forth until Dallas Reed entered the game late in the second half.  He had limited time because of an injury.  On this drive he rushed three times and then caught a 63 yard Grant Jones pass to give his team a 13-0 halftime lead.

After halftime, Section put together two scoring drives.  On the first one, David Atkins broke the only long run of the night for the Lions going 57 yards for a TD.  Then, more sloppy.  Collinsville fumbled and Dalton Rider recovered setting up a 26 yard Alex Hernandez field goal bringing the score to 13-10.

That seemed to wake Collinsville up.  They scored touchdowns on their next three possessions and did not let Section move the ball.  Willingham said, “I thought that in the second half we blocked better and had more intensity.  We played much better.”  The TDs came on runs of 57 and 47 yards by Blakely and another long pass to Reed of 61 yards, this one from Keaton Kilgro.

As the team left the field in the increasing rain, Willingham said, “We’ve got three big region games coming up.  We have to take them one at a time.  And the first one is Ider.