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Brighton puts halt to Hornets' season, 28-7

Wednesday, November, 28 By Nick Curcuru
Correspondent

Manchester Essex came into yesterday's Division 4 semifinal against Brighton with two objectives defensively: One, was to contain Bengals quarterback Kameel Lashley. Two, was to make plays on the rest of the backs when needed.

The Hornets did a fine job making plays on the supporting cast, but they were unable to keep Lashley under wraps as the senior captain ran for 180 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Bengals to a 28-7 win at Wayland High School.

Brighton (11-0) will now move on to the Division 4 Super Bowl for the second straight season on Saturday to play West Bridgewater, which had its way with Pope John yesterday, 24-0. The Hornets' 9-3 season comes to an end in the semifinal round for the second straight season.

"This was a tough game against a tough team," Hornets head coach Mike Athanas said. "We played well, just not well enough to beat them."

The Hornets were up 7-6 heading into the third quarter when Lashley took the game over. On Brighton's opening drive of the second half, the Bengals marched down inside the 3-yard line only to see their drive end with a fumble. The Bengals would get the ball back on a three-and-out, however, and Lashley would give Brighton the lead with a 43-yard run on the first play of the drive. They would add a two-point conversion to make it 14-7. The Bengals signal caller gained 136 of his 180 yards in the second half.

"He is a great ballplayer," Athanas said of the 6-foot-3, 225-pound quarterback. "He is tough to take down and he took full advantage of a few defensive breakdowns."

Lashley threw a late fourth-quarter touchdown pass to Kariym Azeez to make it 22-7. Kevin DePina added a score with less than a minute to play. Bengals head coach James Philip liked what he saw from his offense.

"We didn't have any problem moving the ball, we never do," Philip said. "If we let up only one touchdown a game we will win every time because we can put points on the board."

While Brighton's offense was effective, its defense was dominant, holding the Hornets to less than 175 yards of total offense and just 22 yards in the second half. The Bengals defense was lead by nose tackle Dane Daguilar with 3 sacks and linebacker Azeez with 12 tackles.

"We had a lot of trouble blocking their defensive line," Athanas said. "They have a big athletic defense that gave us a lot of problems."

The Hornets drew first blood in the first quarter by scoring on their first drive. Quarterback Pat Orlando hit Ben Kekeisen for an 18-yard touchdown. The rest of the first half was a defensive struggle until Brighton was able to put together a drive that concluded with a Lashley 1-yard run with under a minute to play.

Despite the loss, the Hornets are proud of a successful season in which they won their second straight Commonwealth Small Conference championship.

"The kids played great all season," Athanas said. "We got back-to-back conference titles and we played tough football all season. We will come back and start getting in the weight room shortly so we can get ready for next season."