DANVILLE – Danville came out firing and took advantage of some mistakes, beating visiting Highland 29-6 in a crucial Knox Morrow Athletic Conference football matchup for both teams on Friday evening.
The Blue Devils' defense grabbed three first-half interceptions, including two that they turned into touchdowns.
“We’ve been telling them for the last few weeks that every team in this conference is going to be a dogfight,” Danville coach Cameron Smith said. “Our word of the week since Week 2 was ‘attack’. So we just carried it on.”
Danville’s Dustin Beckett picked off a pass from Highland quarterback Kadin Johnson (9-for-18, 74 yards, one TD, 4 interceptions) on the game’s opening drive.
Danville got into Scots territory with a 62-yard run by Kaiden Colopy, but their drive sputtered.
On the very next Highland drive, Devils sophomore Aaron Mezie intercepted Johnson and gave his team the ball on the Highland 2-yard line. Later, Danville quarterback Max Payne (11-for-20, 137 yards, two TDs and no interceptions) ran it in for a 2-yard touchdown. The 2-point conversion on a pass to Mezie put the Devils on top, 8-0.
Early in the second quarter, Danville’s Walker Weckesser came up with an interception to give his team the ball on the Highland 22. The Devils eventually turned that into six more points with a short touchdown run from Nathan Butts.
Danville got the ball one more time before the half and marched 88 yards on a drive highlighted by a pair of 25-yard passes to Colopy and Mezie. It was also Mezie who capped the drive by hauling in an 18-yard TD pass. He finished the game with five catches for 95 yards.
“We came out here and we didn’t have big heads,” Mezie said. “We just punched them right in the mouth. The team played well. You couldn’t ask our line or our quarterback for a better job.”
Danville’s offense rolled up 289 yards in the game.
Down 22-0, the Scots finally found the end zone when Highland’s Landon Remmert came down with a 37-yard Johnson pass in the waning seconds of the half.
That would be the only time the Scots would score. The Blue Devils defense held them to 95 total yards. To make matters worse for Highland, they had eight penalties in the game for 56 yards.
“We got beaten in every facet of the game tonight,” Highland coach Matt Jones said. “Hats off to Danville. They played extremely hard and we made way too many mistakes.”
Next Friday, the Blue Devils (4-1, 4-1) visit archrival East Knox in the Devil-Dog game. Highland (2-3, 2-3) will host Northmor. Both games kick off at 7 p.m.
