Big plays, mental breakdowns plague Waccamaw in opening loss

Too many long runs. Too many mental mistakes.

A recurring theme played out for Waccamaw in a season-opening 47-13 loss to Andrews on Friday night.

However, Warriors coach Tyronne Davis isn’t panicking after his young team’s first loss of the season.

“I can take the mental mistakes as long as we are going to work hard and improve,” the coach said.

He pointed to several positives he saw in this game.

▪ Sophomore quarterback Brandon Stecz threw for 102 yards, including a 60-yard score to Dominic Gullo, while not getting sacked in the game. “The positive was he’s a 10th-grader,” Davis said. “I was real impressed the way he hung in there tonight.”

▪ Andrix Greene ran for a 55-yard touchdown.

▪ The Warriors gained over 200 yards on offense.

However, Waccamaw’s defense struggled. However, an interception, lost fumble and blocked punt didn’t do the unit any favors in this one.

“Mistakes cost us,” Davis said. “When you have three turnovers like that in your end of the field it gives them a short field to work with and bad things can happen.”

Several long runs also hurt the Warriors.

“I think what happened is they wore us down late in the game,” Davis said. “They were able to break some long runs and pulled away from us.”

Despite the loss, the Warriors were able to gain some valuable experience.

“The good thing is that in the past we’ve struggled with numbers. We haven’t had that problem this year,” Davis said. “I think that we were able to play a lot of kids tonight. We had no injuries.”

Waccamaw will take on St. James, which lost 30-14 to Loris on Friday night, next week in its home opener.

“St. James is going to be tough,” Davis said. “We’ve just got to work on getting better. We can’t make the mistakes we made. We can’t turn the ball over. We can’t give up the long runs. We’ve got to improve on those mistakes. … It’s still early in the season. … We’ve just got to work on protecting the football and not giving up those long runs. We’ve got to make St. James earn the scores and drive the ball the length of the field.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 1:15 AM with the headline "Big plays, mental breakdowns plague Waccamaw in opening loss."