Cody Pastorella
CNHI
BEAUMONT —
BEAUMONT — The Memorial Titans football team made school history Saturday night, bullying the Ozen Panthers for a 47-27 victory to move their season record to 2-0, a first for the program.
Although his Titans struggled to effectively close out the Panthers in the fourth quarter, head coach Kenny Harrison said he was pleased with the win.
“I’m happy. We allowed some big plays in the fourth quarter but I have to give Ozen a lot of credit. They are a good team, a much improved team. Jeff Nelson (head coach) has done a great job for them. They have a great scheme and they stuck to it,” explained Harrison, who admitted his team may have lost focus in the fourth quarter when Ozen logged three touchdowns.
Memorial owned a 33-7 advantage at the end of the third quarter, and had the Panthers staring at 4th-and-9 from the Titans 31.
With a stop, Ozen would have probably, very quietly, drifted out to sea. Instead, quarterback David Green lofted a 31-yard touchdown pass to Keyione Blackman, which set the tone for Beaumont’s fourth quarter.
That put the score at 33-13.
Later in the period, Green bolted the pocket for a 44-yard sprint to paydirt, making the score 40-20. Down 47-20 with 7:36 remaining in the contest, Ozen continued to show fight by putting together a 10-play drive that ended with a 1-yard push from Will Sullivan.
At the half, Memorial held a 26-7 lead, 10-4 edge in first downs, and had 200 yards of offense compared to Ozen’s 90. The second half score was Memorial 21, Ozen 20. The Panthers reeled off 13 first downs on 196 yards of offense in the second half, while the Titans moved the sticks just seven times and logged only 115 yards.
“We’re 2-0. I’m happy about that. I thought the kids played hard,” Harrison said, “But we made some mistakes on both sides of the ball. We gave up our first touchdowns tonight, we turned the ball over twice, we gave up big plays, but what we did wrong is correctable and we can learn from those things.”
Receiver and return man Darius White bailed out the Titans with a 62-yard kickoff return following Green’s touchdown pass to Blackman. That put Memorial up 40-13.
Then, with the score 40-20, the Titans scored on a 20-yard run from Fisher Romar who had 41 of Memorial’s 225 rushing yards.
Nate Holmes led the Titans with 63 yards. He picked up 44 of that total on one try when he smoked the Panthers defense through the left side and streaked to the house for a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.
Holmes gave Port Arthur another touchdown in the third quarter, making the score 33-7.
Quarterback Terrence Singleton chipped in with 58 yards rushing and finished off the Titans third scoring drive with a 1-yard keeper. That touchdown gave Memorial a 23-0 edge with 4:13 remaining in the half.
Singleton had a passing touchdown on the night. He hit White on a 14-yard corner rout in the back of the end zone for a 16-0 lead.
It seemed it was going to be all Titans from the start, as Ozen shot itself in the foot with bad snaps and even suffered a safety in the opening period when Dimitri Davis and Stanton Smith boxed Green inside his own endzone. Smith got the sack, giving Memorial a 9-0 lead and another possession.
Later in the first quarter, Memorial’s Lawrence Wise picked off Green to set the offense up with 1st-and-10 from Beaumont’s 27.
Just when the Titans were preparing to drop the hammer on the Panthers, however, Singleton was picked off for the second time in the contest. Ozen’s first interception led to a 44-yard touchdown connection between Green and Nicholas Nelson.
That trimmed Memorial’s advantage to 23-7.
Singleton was 9-for-13 with two picks, a touchdown and 90 yards.
“I think he got relaxed. He made some good plays and then tried too hard to make more of them,” said Harrison, whose team will travel to Alice for next week’s game, which will be at 2 p.m. Saturday. “He is young but I think he will learn some valuable lessons tonight. And this is when you want to learn lessons, in games that you win. You win but you learn something too. It’s a valuable experience.”
