The James River football team picked a bad time to have a bad game as the Knights fell to Three Rivers District rival Floyd County last Friday. The Buffaloes took a 21-7 win in Springwood.
“We didn’t play well at all,” said River coach Tim Jennings. “We had three turnovers and we couldn’t run the ball. I’m not taking anything away from them, but that was one of our worst efforts of the year. We continued to shoot ourselves in the foot.”
With the loss River fell to 4-5 on the season and the Knights are in 11th place in the Region 2C standings with only eight making the playoffs. Patrick County, Fort Chiswell and Nelson County are also 4-5 but ranked higher than the Knights in the point system. River is off this week with one game remaining, against a 2-6 Giles team that is in 12th place. A win over the Spartans won’t help the Knights’ point rating very much.
The three teams ahead of River in the playoff race all have tough games remaining, as Patrick has Halifax, Fort Chiswell has Graham and Nelson has Appomattox. River’s only hope is that all three lose, the Knights beat Giles and somehow the points fall their way.
A win over Floyd last week would have done wonders for River’s playoff chances, but the Buffaloes were clearly the better team on this particular night. They ran for 166 yards to River’s 21 and had 252 overall yards to 106 for the Knights. River trailed 14-0 at the half and 21-0 before Dyllan McAllister hit Kevin Austin with a 10-yard pass for River’s only TD of the game.
McAllister was 11 for 18 passing for 85 yards. Austin caught six balls for 55 yards while Kevin Theimer and Addison McCaleb had two catches each. Hunter Forbes had one reception for two yards and led the rushers with 18 yards on 12 carries.
On defense Theimer and Logan Campbell led the team with 13 tackles each. Nathan Farris had nine tackles, Jack Voight had eight and Levi Walker had six. Campbell had three tackles for losses and a forced fumble while Voight had an interception and Farris had a sack.
River is now off this week, wrapping up the regular season on November 8 with a trip to Giles.
