Both 1-10 teams last fall, the Hazard Bulldogs and Harlan County Black Bears opened the 2024 season with impressive season-opening victories last week.
Hazard built on the momentum from last week with a 33-0 win Friday at Harlan County, blowing open a 6-0 game at halftime with a big-play offense and a dominating performance on the line of scrimmage.
After compiling over 400 yards on the ground in last week’s win, the Bears could only manage 96 yards of offense against Hazard. Senior lineman Kenyon Higgins and the Bulldogs continually stacked up the HCHS backs at the line of scrimmage.
“They whipped us up front. They did an excellent job of getting penetration on us and it was blowing our guards up,” Harlan County coach Jacob Saylor said. “That’s a well-coached football team. That team right there will compete in Class A. Coach Chandler has done an excellent job of turning that culture around, and I told him after the game that he had a top 1A school. We saw on film what we were getting into.”
Despite being dominated statistically, the Bears stayed close in the first half with a 6-0 deficit. Hazard turned the game into a rout in the second half after Gavin Johnson returned the kickoff 85 yards for a score. Pelfrey added a couple of touchdown passes as part of a 314-yard night.
“I thought we kind of quit in the second half,” Saylor said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen that out of them,. I also told them this loss is on me and we’ll go back to work and be a better football team because of this loss.”
The Bears completed only one pass last week, but it didn’t matter as they moved the ball with ease on the ground. Freshman quarterback Brayden Morris completed two of three passes against Hazard
“We tried and had several pass plays called, but (Higgins) just blew us up and took away any opportunity we had to throw the football,” Saylor said. “We aren’t going to use youth as an excuse, We grew up a lot last week. They just whipped our tails tonight, and we’ll learn from it.”
The Bears looked good early, much like in last week’s game, marching to the Hazard 16 on their 11-play drive to open the game, A holding penalty wiped out Luke Kelly’s six-yard run for a first down, and the drive stalled on an incomplete pass on fourth down.
Harlan County’s defense appeared to come up with a big play when Gage Bailey appeared to jar the ball loose with a hard hit on a pass to Johnson inside the HC 5. Officials ruled the pass was incomplete, keeping a drive alive that ended when Pelfrey teamed with Johnson for a 19-yard TD pass with 2:42 left in the first quarter.
Hazard threatened again late in the half before the HCHS defense responded with an interception in the end zone by Kelly with 44 seconds left in the half.
Johnson’s kickoff return to start the second half seemed to take a lot of steam out of the Bears’ defense. Memphis Blankenship scored on a 21-yard run with 5:57 left in the third quarter, then Pelfrey found Javion Fullwood with a 31-yard scoring strike at the 1:44 mark of the third quarter.
Pelfrey teamed with Jayvon White on a screen pass that turned into a 72-yard touchdown play with 4:47 left. Landon Sebastian hit the extra point to close the scoring.
Harlan County (1-1) travels to Whitley County on Friday. Hazard (2-0) will play host to Paris on Friday.