LISBON — The Lisbon football team had enough of close games against Oak Hill.

So, down by one score at halftime, the Greyhounds flipped the script in the second half, out-scoring the Raiders 30-0 for a 36-14 victory in a Class D South clash at Thompson Field on Saturday.

“We know we’re a good second-half team. We weren’t really worried about it,” Lisbon’s Lucas Francis said. “It’s homecoming, we got to dig deep; it’s one of the seniors’ last games on this field. We had to come out hot and change the momentum of the game, get the lead back.”

Francis helped the Greyhounds (4-1) tie the game on the opening series of the third quarter, rumbling in from 4 yards out on the fourth play of the drive. Tyler Halls found Tyrese Joseph for the two-point pass, making it 14-14.

The second half began with a failed onside kick by the Raiders (3-2). Then Oak Hill personal fouls followed runs of 7 and 14 yards by Kurtis Bolton and Francis, respectively. The two runners then traded off carries to finish the final 10 yards of the drive.

“We made some mistakes today,” Oak Hill coach Stacen Doucette said.

The Raiders had a chance to make it a two-score game at the end of the first half. After stopping Halls just short on a fourth-down run at the Oak Hill 6-yard line, the Raiders marched down to the Lisbon 6 in 16 plays over the final five minutes of the half, but Joseph pressured Matthew Strout into throwing an incomplete pass on the final play with 1.8 seconds left.

The teams traded touchdown runs to start the game. Austin Noble finished off the opening drive with a 3-yard run to put Oak Hill up 6-0, then Halls kept it himself from 2 yards out to tie the game.

After Oak Hill went three-and-out, the Greyhounds went on a drive into the Raiders’ red zone. Halls looked Francis’ way on a fourth-down pass to start the second quarter, but Darryn Bailey knocked it away.

“I thought the kids were just playing physical and checking with their assignments,” Doucette said.

Cruz Poirier was stopped for no gain when Oak Hill took over possession, but Steve Gilbert followed with an 83-yard touchdown run.

Gilbert ran for 155 yards in the first half before the Greyhounds made an adjustment to slow him down. He gained only 13 more yards after halftime.

“He’s a good athlete,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said. “We made a change.”

The halftime talk for Lisbon was all about Xs and Os, and not about any prophetic prose by Mynahan.

“I don’t think I ever worked any magic,” Mynahan said. “We tried a different formation. We’ve been working on it for four weeks or so, and we haven’t used it. It seemed to work well in the second half.”

The Greyhounds switched to a double-wing offense, using Francis and Bolton as the wings. Francis ran for 143 yards, while Bolton added 38 on five second-half carries.

“We just needed to buckle down a little more, show our will,” Francis said.

Lisbon forced a three-and-out and a punt on Oak Hill’s first possession of the second half. The Greyhounds then took the lead thanks to Halls’ 1-yard keeper for a touchdown, making it 20-14.

Jared Glover made it a two-score game by intercepting Strout on the ensuing drive and returning it 45 yards for a touchdown.

“Our pass defense, we’ve always been suspect on that,” Mynahan said. “We made a couple of big plays when we had to.”

Halls intercepted Strout on the next drive, returning a deep throw 37 yards to the 43-yard line. The senior then capped off the Greyhounds’ final drive with a 7-yard touchdown run.

“Sometimes you got to try to get into a game, and you lose your identity a little bit, and they made plays and we didn’t,” said Doucette, who was forced by the score to go to a passing offense.

Strout was 3 of 14 passing for 43 yards. Halls missed on his only regular passing attempt, but did connect on all three of his two-point throws.

Francis said he’s been waiting for this matchup since Oak Hill won last year’s Class D South regional final by one point. Mynahan, however, called it “just a game” that won’t mean much other than possibly playoff positioning.

“The bottom line is, I think, these two teams could be meeting down the line two or three weeks from now,” Mynahan said.

wkramlich@sunjournal.com

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