Rough First Half Dooms Braves in Season Opener

Down 33-6 at the half to a Tenafly squad firing on all cylinders, it would have been hard to fault the Indian Hills football team if it decided to fold up the tents and call it a day.

The Braves didn't pack it in, though, and played much better in the second half, falling 33-14 at Tenafly on Saturday afternoon.

"We didn't quit," said first-year Indian Hills coach Joe Sabella. "We came out in the second half, and we didn't give up any more touchdowns, and we got a score of our own."

It looked like the Braves were in for a long afternoon after going three and out on the opening series and giving up a  58-yard touchdown run to Billy Tesher on Tenafly's first play from scrimmage.

"(The quick score) definitely hurt us mentally," Sabella said. "But, when we did score to make it 14-6 then we started to have that belief. They never punted in the first half; that was a devastating factor."

Tenafly had no need to punt because it was having its way with the Indian Hills defense. Tesher scored two more rushing touchdowns in the first half, while quarterback Paul Hamersma found receiver Ryan Lubatkin for a pair of long scoring strikes.

"We've got to be better tacklers," Sabella said. "We gave up too much in the running game, and we gave up those two big passing plays. We've got to get better defensively."

Indian Hills sophomore quarterback Danny Thompson carried the ball early and often, on designed quarterback keepers and while scrambling.  One of those runs came on fourth down and six yards to go, as Thompson weaved his way through the Tigers' defense to find the end zone.

In order to keep this game close, though, Sabella needed to find a way to get through to his young squad at half-time.

"First and foremost we wanted to cut down on penalties; we had nine total, six of those were in the first half," Sabella said. "So the main message was to limit penalties. If we had some more success on offense in the second half we would have been in it."

With Tenafly trying to run out the clock late in the game, a combination of the defense tightening up when it needed to and Sabella's smart use of his timeouts gave his team another opportunity on offense with under a minute to go. Junior running back Danny Dellaconi, who had struggled to find room to run for much of the game, took a handoff going off-tackle to the right, bounced outside and raced down the sideline for a 66-yard TD to cap the scoring.