Boonville – A first quarter safety and 30 points against in the first half led to the Wildcats varsity football team’s first-round exit Friday night.
Andrews (4-6) was met with a tough first-round opponent in No. 9 seed Starmount Rams (10-1), who went 9-1 in the regular season with their only loss being by three points to undefeated Mount Airy (11-0).
The Rams scored nine points in the opening quarter on a touchdown and a safety. In the second quarter, they tacked on three more touchdowns to extend their lead to 30-0 at halftime.
In the second half, the Rams’ scoring decreased, but they still put points on the board to further extend their lead over the Wildcats. The Rams scored two touchdowns in the third quarter and added another one in the fourth to win the first-round matchup 51-0.
The Wildcats seemingly couldn’t get their offense going against the tough Rams defense.
Starmount’s defense came out strong, as expected, and held the Wildcats. On the other side, Starmount’s offense also came out strong as the Wildcat defense allowed the Rams to amass 327 yards total.
The Andrews defense did a good job to mitigate the ground game of Rams quarterback Luke Collins as he rushed for -4 yards on five carries. This season, Collins has averaged 39 rushing yards per game.
The Wildcats also limited the passing of Collins as he threw below his average passing yards per game Friday night. His average this season is 152.2 passing yards per game and Friday night he only threw for 70 yards. He also averages 2.5 passing touchdowns per game and Friday night he only threw for one touchdown.
The Rams’ other six touchdowns came on the ground as their leading rusher Kinston Crater ran for 138 yards on 12 carries and found the end zone three times. One of his rushing touchdowns was over 100 yards.
Speaking on Friday night’s loss, Wildcats head coach James Phillips said the team didn’t play well. He said that Starmount’s defense was piling eight people in the box and were blitzing and that the Wildcats didn’t do a good job picking them up. He did say they did well defensively at times by forcing them to punt and forcing three and outs.
Phillips said there wasn’t a lot he could say after the game Friday night.
“It’s hard to say anything meaningful really at a time like that when you have seniors playing their final game 225 miles from home. I don’t like in those situations to say a whole lot because everyones hurting and Everyone just wants to get packed up and get out of there and get home . We usually save our final team meeting for [Monday] after school and we’ll meet one last time as a team. I can say a whole lot more and recognize our seniors and do it on our terms at our school. I told them I was proud of them collectively for the season and their careers for the commitment to our program. Obviously there wasn’t a whole lot I could say about the game that night itself because nothing really needed to be said. Our players knew we didn’t play well. I’ll say a lot more in our team meeting [Monday].”
Phillips said his message to the returning players is “The standard of our program is high character, highly committed players to the program, and kids that are highly coachable. We’re going to have to get bigger, stronger, faster. Any football coach will tell you that in the offseason. There’s going to have to be a collective commitment to winning and putting in the work to be a winning football team next year. we’ll be a little young, we’ll be a whole lot young next year. And then underclassmen who are going to have to decide if they are football players or kids playing football because there’s a difference. That’s probably the biggest message for the underclassmen: are you a kid that’s just playing football or are you going to be a football player?”
The Wildcats were not the only Smoky Mountain Conference team to lose Friday night as No. 29 seed Swain County fell to No. 4 Eastern Randolph 49-0.
The Wildcats finished their season 4-6 overall and 1-4 in the SMC. As their 2024 season comes to a close, players will now shift to winter sports of basketball, indoor track and wrestling.