It wasn’t the Tigers’ night Friday as they played host to the Smith County Owls, who jumped to a 28-0 first-quarter lead.
Although DeKalb had a better second-half showing, it wasn’t enough and Smith County took home a 53-21 victory.
“They’re a good football team that does so much on offense. Defensively you have to be ready to defend everything they can do and apparently we weren’t,” said Tiger Head Coach Steve Trapp. “Offensively for they got after us. They were faster, more physical, and brought a brand of football on the field that we’re supposed to be bringing and our guys didn’t respond very well.
“It’s just a bad night, but we’re going to find the positives. I think TC showed a lot of guts in the QB position; he’s still not 100 percent and we pretty much turned to throwing the ball in the second half and he made some good throws. Our receivers have got to be able to make some catches in tough situations which they’re not doing very well. If we’re wide open we do ok, Trapp noted.”
 “It’s all of it … we’ve got to have some guys around him stepping up; it’s just tough … there’s a lot of not-so-great words I could use to describe how we performed all this week in practice. It’s like I told them before the game, their mentality will show up in their actions and they proved to us ultimately what they were feeling and we’re hoping to turn that around for next week.”
The Tigers (2-6) found some success on offense in a second-quarter drive that started at their own 35-yard line. Cantrell took to the air in a series of first downs, completing passes to Paxton Butler, Braxton Linder and Bradley Miller.
In a clutch situation on a third-and-6 on the Owl’s 9-yard line, Cantrell found Linder for a TD, putting DeKalb on the board while Andrew Fuson made the PAT for a 7-28 score with 10:10 remaining in the second quarter.
Smith County didn’t let down however, getting two more touchdowns both by 6-foot-2 senior Shermar King, who confounded the Tiger D both in the air and on the ground before the break, leaving the Tigers in a 41-7 deficit to dig out of at halftime.
The Owls struck again in the third quarter with a 19-yard TD run by John Ross Hord at 7:06 for a 47-7 lead after an unsuccessful PAT.
DeKalb County stuck with what’s working and Cantrell hit Miller for a 67-yard TD pass and Fuson made it 47-14 with a good PAT with 5:57 left in the third quarter. Cantrell then connected to Linder twice, the second for a TD with 15 seconds left in the third and Fuson brought the Tigers closer 47-21 with a good PAT.
The Owls killed the clock during the fourth quarter with two possessions, the second of which came by picking off Cantrell with 2:37 left in the contest, scoring the final TD on an 80-yard TD run by Trevor Dickens and good PAT for the 53-21 final with 1:36 left in the game.
Time ran out on the Tigers’ final possession.
DeKalb will be looking for a win to get into the post-season by playing host to Macon County Friday. Game time is 7 p.m.