The Lake Hornets entered last Friday nights game against the visiting Eupora Eagles with high confidence after knocking off a No. 1 seed in East Union the prior week. This week the Hornets had the luxury of playing on their home field and were looking to punch their ticket to the third round of the 2A playoffs with a big win.
The field at Death Valley is home to the Hornets but last Friday night it was a wet home field advantage. After constant rain for an entire week in Scott County leading up to the game field conditions were muddy at best.
In addition to the poor field conditions the Hornets ran into a defensive juggernaut in a Eupora team that has not allowed their opponents to find the endzone during this year’s playoffs. This game would be no different at the Hornets struggled to get anything going offensively and the visiting Eagles would add points to the scoreboard in three of the four quarters and leave with a 27-0 win.
Both teams needed to get acclimated to the field conditions as the wet field almost played like a 12th defender. The first quarter would come to an end with a 0-0 tie.
In the second quarter Eupora was able to get its offense moving and scored on a touchdown pass midway through the quarter to take a 6-0 lead. That would be all of the scoring for the first half of the game and the visiting Eagles took a 6-0 lead into halftime.
When the teams returned to the field for the second half Eupora seemed to have settled in and started moving the ball on offense while their defense tightened its lock on the Hornet offense. The Eagles would score on two TD runs in the third and take a commanding 20-0 lead into the start of the final quarter.
The Hornets knew the final 12 minutes of the ballgame they had to play for their season and playoff lives but on this wet night in Lake it was just not meant to be. The visiting Eagles would go on to tack on one more score and hold the Lake offense at bay to complete the shutout victory 27-0.
