Five men wearing officials stripes were the only people inside Buccaneer Stadium who knew precisely how much time remained in a first half Barbe quarterback Gavin Nettles had methodically controlled in Friday night’s authoritative, 33-7 win against C.E. Byrd.
The senior signal-caller commanded a 2-minute drill in name only. Neither Nettles, the 10 other men on his offense, nor Bucs head coach Mike Cutrera knew exactly how much time they had to pad their tenuous 13-7 lead, the fault of a malfunctioning stadium scoreboard that worked for one series.
The drive began on the Bucs’ 4-yard line. Nettles found Nate Briscoe for 30 yards on the first play.
Nine plays followed, including Briscoe’s fourth-down conversion on Byrd’s end of the field. It ended with Nettles’ second touchdown of the first half — a 20-yard strike to Keandre Turner at the back pylon.
Nettles commanded all of this without the luxury of a visible clock. Still, Nettles completed his final eight passes of the half, the last, his back shoulder fade to Turner, to put the Bucs up 19-7 at halftime.
“He’s a three-year starter, and we look for that, because you can’t beat experience,” Cutrera said. “He has that. He stayed calm, ran the offense well and we were able to punch it in there right before the half. That was huge. It added momentum going into the second half.”
His defense did the same, exorcising demons from last season’s 53-14 loss in Shreveport, solving the Yellow Jackets’ triple-option attack which never displayed any form of continuity.
Barbe, and Briscoe, wrestled momentum early. The senior receiver caught Nettles’ screen on the sixth play of the game, spinning away from four tackles and breaking it to the outside, scoring on the 36-yard pass to put the Bucs up 7-0.
Cutrera then called an onside kick, which Bucs cornerback Jakoby Pappillion caught as it hopped up near the 50. Pappillion also intercepted Byrd quarterback Zavier Moore early in the fourth quarter, returning it inside the red zone to begin star Barbe running back Kirkland Banks’ bountiful fourth quarter.
Banks, who finished with 130 yards on 15 carries, rushed for two of his three touchdowns in the quarter, but none was prettier than his first.
On the third play of the second quarter, Banks took Nettles’ handoff and bounced it outside, tiptoeing the home sideline for a 47-yard score that broke a 7-7 deadlock, lifting a team in search of redemption following last year’s beatdown.
“I don’t know if it was revenge, but our kids had something to prove,” Cutrera said. “They knew that we were a better football team than we were at this time last year and they wanted to come out here and prove that.”
When the zany formation appeared, Barbe had little trouble. Utilizing primarily fullback Bailey O’Byrne, Byrd was unable to cultivate any continuity with the running game. It had two runs of 10 or more yards and committed 12 penalties.
Workhorse running Jalin Thomas’ injury that removed him from the game early in the third quarter was, ultimately, the final blow.
“We’re young and inexperienced and, boy, did it show tonight,” Byrd coach Mike Suggs said of his team that returned two starters. “When you play as poorly as we did, I think our guys played hard, they were trying and the effort was there. But there were so many busts, you don’t give yourself a chance.”
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