Hawks put up good fight against Cane Bay, but come up short

The Hanahan Hawks football team solved the Cane Bay defense Friday night, scoring 31 points. But the Hawks still haven’t come up with a solution to win close games.

Cane Bay survived the Hawks 38-31 as the Hawks dropped another heart breaker. They fell to 2-4 on the season and are 5-12 in the past two years. Five of those losses have been by a touchdown or less.

Last year, the Hawks dropped a seven-point decision to Andrews and suffered through a one-point heartbreaker to Berkeley. The Hawks also lost to Manning by five points and were six points short of a win vs. Timberland.

With a little luck, the 5-12 record the past two years could have been 10-7.

“I’m tired of it,” Hanahan coach Charlie Patterson said. “It just seems like we can’t get over the hump and win these games. Friday, we did pretty well on offense. Quincy Mitchell had another big game. Even the times we didn’t score, we stopped ourselves with bad snaps, penalties and things like that.”

Cane Bay entered the game allowing only 12 points per contest on defense. The Hawks had 14 points at halftime, but the Hawks couldn’t stop Cobra quarterback Chris Copeland, who tallied about 300 yards in total offense. Not bad for a player who was a backup to R.J. Roderick, who is out for the season with an injury.

“Defensively, we couldn’t tackle the Copeland kid,” Patterson said. “We pretty much let one kid dominate us. He put on a show for them. We couldn’t stop them on kickoff returns or offense.”

The Cobras couldn’t stop Hawk standout running back Quincy Mitchell. He scored on touchdown runs of 3 and 71 yards and caught a pass from quarterback Jake Ward and turned it into a 65-yard catch and run.

Ward also threw a touchdown pass to Noah Mills.

Mitchell, arguably the state’s top sprinter heading into the 2018 track and field season, rushed for more than 200 yards,

The Hawks’ play has left Patterson scratching his head.

“We can’t seem to put together four good quarters of play,” he said. “When we play well on offense, we don’t play well on defense, and vice versa. We seem to have a hard time of putting together four good quarters in all three phases of the game (offense, defense and special teams) in the same game. If I could put a finger on it, we could fix it.”

The Hawks begin Region 8-AAA play this weekend with a home game against Manning. The Monarchs enter the game with a 6-0 record and are allowing only 15 points per outing.

“They are good, but I don’t believe they face the competition we have,” Patterson said. “We have one common opponent (May River) and we beat them by (about) 20 points and they beat them by one point.”