SWFL high school football: Dunbar dominates Cypress Lake in Tuesday district game
Tuesday night football doesn’t look like it’s here to stay in Lee County.
With both teams coming off games on Friday, the Class 3S-District 15 battle wasn’t the prettiest contest, filled with penalties and turnovers, but the Tigers’ victory was never in doubt.
Dunbar shut out Cypress Lake 47-0 in a game that was rescheduled as schools were forced to scramble to play their district games in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.
Dunbar has now won 14 consecutive contests against Lee County squads. On Friday, they traveled to Valdosta, Georgia to play Lowndes, losing 43-12.
“We just got off the bus it feels like,” Dunbar head coach Sammy Brown said.
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Quarterback Landon Winterbottom opened the scoring with a screen pass to Eric Fletcher, who outran the Cypress defense for a 62-yard score. Before the first quarter was over, the Tigers would score two more times on a 4-yard rush by David Perkins and a pick-6 by Eddie Bennett.
Winterbottom, who went 8-for-12 for 144 yards in a half of play, found Tawaski Abrams for a 36-yard touchdown at the end of the half.
In the fourth quarter, Javieane Stevens and Eddie Bennett ran for touchdowns, and the Tigers returned a Panther fumble for a touchdown as time expired in regulation.
Because of Hurricane Ian and weather conditions that postponed other games, this was Dunbar’s first win since they were on the road in Week 3 against Bishop Verot and their first home win since Sept. 2.
“It felt nice,” Winterbottom said. “We haven’t played here in a while, so it felt good to be out here with our home crowd.”
Dunbar takeaways
1. The Tiger offense was at its best in a two-minute drill at the end of the half. At times on Tuesday, the offense stopped itself with penalties or missed connections in the passing game.
That wasn’t the case with just over two minutes left in the first half. Winterbottom found Fletcher and Camden Rivera for quick completions before launching a ball to Abrams for a score. He also succeeded on 2-point conversion with a pass to Abrams.
“Our offense tends to really work well under pressure, so just driving the ball downfield in two minutes seems really easy,” Winterbottom said. “We‘ve been working on that in practice.
2. The defense got their first shutout of the season. The unit wreaked havoc on the Panther offense all night, forcing negative play after negative play. The team had three turnovers – two returned for touchdowns in addition to a snag by Ken’Darius Green.
3. The team’s depth shined with six different players scoring for the Tigers.
“The guys we got in the locker room – I was confident they could get the job done,” Brown said. “They came in with the mental mindset of finishing this thing and we got in and got them out kind of early, and some of our younger guys got a chance to play tonight.”
Cypress Lake takeaways
1. With a student population at the school hit hard by Hurricane Ian, including many players on the football team, head coach Joey Mendes stressed embracing this opportunity.
“The biggest thing I told them tonight is just go have fun,” he said. “We went through enough headaches and heartaches and a bunch of adversity over the last couple weeks – just go out and have fun tonight and see what happens, and that was our message at halftime.”
2. The quick turnaround had an effect on the team as an injury prevented starting quarterback Tyrese Nelson from playing. Nate Lynn and Chartrael Jenkins split snaps under center. Jenkins completed seven passes, but three were stopped by the Tigers behind the line of scrimmage.
3. The defense played tough. The Panthers recovered a pair of fumbles, and Kendrick Moore picked off Dunbar quarterback Austin Price.
Two of the turnovers came in an impressive third quarter where they held the Tigers scoreless.
“The defense played well pretty much the whole night I thought,” Mendes said. “They flew around.”
Follow News-Press Sports Reporter Dustin Levy on Twitter: @DustinBLevy. For additional coverage of sports across Southwest Florida, follow @newspresssports and @ndnprepzone on Instagram.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: SWFL high school football: Dunbar dominates Cypress Lake
