Southern Lee uses turnovers to dominate Douglas Byrd football

The rainy conditions seemed to affect one side more than the other on Thursday as Southern Lee, led by quarterback Ishois Times’ four rushing touchdowns, blew past Fayetteville’s Douglas Byrd 46-8 to open Cape Fear Valley 3A Conference play.

“Taking care of the ball has been a major focus since I’ve been here for nights like this,” said Southern Lee coach Don Simon.

Byrd (1-5, 0-1) had four fumbles lost in the first half to fall behind 26-0.

In the second half, Southern Lee (3-2, 1-0) took advantage of a deep kickoff that fell in front of a Byrd reciever who misjudged the bounce. The Cavaliers, who had just scored, recovered and scored on a 22-yard Jahmir Smith run on the next play to put the game away.

Turning point

Jarvis Jackson’s opening kickoff return for touchdown set the tone, but what really established what kind of night this was going to be for Byrd early was a brilliant 57-yard touchdown run by Times on the Cavaliers’ first possession.

Times started rolling out to his left, appeared sacked for a loss, broke free and began weaving his way back to the middle of the field where he made more Eagles miss and kicked it down the sideline for the score.

Southern Lee had run two offensive plays, yet was up 12-0.

“When he’s on he can do a lot of spectacular things, he really can. A lot of what he did tonight was him calling it, too,” coach Simon said. “We really gave him a lot of free reign of different things he was doing running the ball.”

3 who mattered

Ishois Times, Southern Lee: He had 186 yards rushing on 12 carries, scoring on runs of 57, 13, 30 and 65 yards. It was a wrap once he hit the second level of the defense.

“If it was just the (defensive back) I felt like I could beat him,” Times said. “It’s good going into conference play.”

Tre Moses, Douglas Byrd: The Eagles QB was equally as fleet of foot, rushing for 145 yards on 23 carries with one TD.

Jarvis Jackson, Southern Lee: Finished with 122 yards rushing on nine carries and one TD in addition to his kickoff return.

By the numbers

1: Completions were hard to come by, as the teams combined for just one.

336: Southern Lee had 336 yards rushing for almost 10 yards a carry (35 attempts).

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 9:47 PM with the headline "Southern Lee uses turnovers to dominate Douglas Byrd football."