The Hattiesburg Tigers accomplished a pair of feats Thursday night with their 48-19 win over Long Beach. For one, the Tigers are now a perfect 10-0 on the season. Also, they captured their first region title in nearly 20 years.
“First time in a long time,” Hattiesburg head coach Tony Vance said. “And the first time we’ve been able to do it at home in front of our home crowd.”
The week-to-week mentality remains. It’s worked for 10 straight games, so why switch up now, right?
“We’re 1-0 this week,” Vance said. “It wasn’t real pretty. But we’re 1-0, so we’ll take it.”
Long Beach (6-4) came out firing on all cylinders to start Thursday night. The Bearcats scored on a 65-yard touchdown on the game’s first offensive play. After a quick response from the Tigers and a 6-yard score from Fabian Franklin, the Bearcats scored again, taking a 13-6 lead midway through the first quarter.
“Lack of execution early on offense. Just lack of focus, I think,” Vance said. “It took some settling down.”
Didn’t take long for Vance’s Tigers to do that. After a touchdown and two-point rush from Jarod Conner, Hattiesburg took a 14-13 lead into the second quarter. Conner primarily played running back in the game after starting the previous nine at quarterback, while Dandre Humbles got the start under center.
“It’s something we’ve been working on for a few weeks,” Vance explained. “Now was a good night to try it, and we did. Still working on some things. Just getting ready for the playoffs and moving forward.”
“Dandre is kind of our jump-starter a lot of times on offense. And we wanted to give Snoop [Jarod Conner] some more time at running back.”
Again, Conner played big, rushing for 95 yards on just nine carries. But so did Hattiesburg’s defense. The Tigers ran away with the ballgame in the second quarter, thanks in large part to defensive touchdowns from linebackers Dexter Jordan and Will Robinson.
“Defense answered with two touchdowns in the first half to kind of get us some momentum and give time to our offense to get going a little bit,” Vance added.
All in all, the Tigers outscored the Bearcats 21-0 in the quarter, as they took a 35-13 lead into halftime. In the second half, another touchdown from Franklin and one from Drexlan Allen only widened the gap. Allen finished with 79 rushing yards for the Tigers, who as previously mentioned, moved to 10-0 overall and 6-0 in region play with the win.
“It’s one of those things you’ll look back on after the season’s over. ‘Hey guys, this is what we accomplished’. But now, it’s just business each and every week,” Vance said. “Let’s go 1-0 this week.”
Vance and the Tigers will close out the regular season next Friday at West Harrison.
