Wildcats make ‘no excuses’ after recent loss

LEE – Before the season started for the Lee football team, Head Coach Keith Thomson knew that he was going to face some challenges “rebuilding” from a Western Massachusetts Super Bowl contender last year.

What Thomson didn’t expect was his senior leadership dropping like flies due to the injury bug. Despite losses in the backfield of Cam Collins and Matty Kelly and a few other important starters (including Vinny Onorato on Friday night), Lee, however, makes “no excuses” for their early 1-3 start.

“We don’t make excuses – everyone has injuries,” Thomson said. “We lost a lot of key players, [such as] Kelly and Collins, that are certainly a factor but we expect the guys we got to go out and perform, and right now it’s not happening.”

In their recent 20-0 loss to Taconic, the Wildcats rushed for minus-13 yards, something that has been unheard of in recent years at Consolati Field.

“That’s been the story all year, we can’t consistently put anything together on the ground, and if we can’t run the football it’s going to be a long year,” Thomson said.

Wildcat starting quarterback Deaglan Giarolo, who threw for 78 yards, was harassed all night, especially after offensive lineman Onorato left the game with injury, giving Lee a decimated offensive line that had no chance against Taconic.

Taconic finished the game with four sacks including a quarterback pressure that caused an interception return for a touchdown by Taconic’s Jordan Knowlton.

With all the holes on both the offensive and defensive line due to injuries, Thomson has what’s left of his roster returning to practice this week focused on the fundamentals.

“We are going back to the drawing board this week,” Thomson said. “We got to improve in a lot of areas, we are going in right now like it’s training camp – going back to the basics.”

Before the Taconic game, the Wildcats were optimistic that with the Braves missing star running back Trayvon Sims, the Wildcats would have a chance to keep the Braves out of the end zone.

However, the Lee defensive line was porous as Taconic ran up big yardage with fullback Jordan Pasquerelli, while Taconic quarterback Troy Ziter threw some “jump balls” in the corner of the Lee end zone that created a penalty and also resulted in a 30-yard touchdown to put the game out of reach.

“We are giving up eight inches to some guys and it is what it is,” Thomson said. “A couple of those plays we had good position on the ball – the ball went up – and we lost the jump balls, it’s something we are adjusting in practice.”

This Friday the Wildcats will have their most daunting task of the season as they host an undefeated Mt. Greylock team that again looks poise to return to the western Massachusetts pedestal.

“We are going to basically re-stress how to block, how to convert and get back to square one and see if we can fix this thing,” Thomson said. “We have a tough opponent this weekend and we just want to see our kids compete.”

Posted by Tim Davis on October 4, 2012. Filed under High School Sports,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry