TULLAHOMA – It wasn’t the start Shelbyville Central first-year head coach Josh Puckett had hoped for as the Golden Eagles fell 38-13 at Tullahoma in a non-region contest in the season opener on Thursday night.

The game was called with just over two minutes left due to lightning.

“To be honest, it’s not that surprising to me. We had a lot of guys on the field playing in their first varsity football game and they were guys we were counting on in some spots,” Puckett said. “Some of them played decently and some didn’t. That was some of the blown coverages and some of the struggles on offense, not being able to sustain some drives. I was afraid we would run into some of that and sure enough we did. Not to take anything away from Tullahoma, they played well and seemed to be coached well.”

Wildcat junior quarterback Ryan Scott had a stellar performance in his first high school start, completing 5-of-9 passes for 187 yards and three touchdowns. He also ran for 30 yards on seven carries.

Shelbyville Central junior quarterback Kade Cunningham was impressive as well, connecting on 8-of-17 passes for 122 yards with a touchdown. He added 90 yards on the ground, including a TD.

Eagle junior receiver Lakota Young had 116 yards and a touchdown.

Tullahoma (1-0) started with a bang when Brody Melton caught a 61-yard pass from Scott at the 10:44 point of the first quarter. Justus Chadwick connected on his first of five extra-points for the early 7-0 lead,

The Eagles (0-1) responded with an impressive 5:36 drive capped off by a six-yard run by Cunningham. Harrison Canter was good on the point after to even the score at 7-7.

Tullahoma added a Jakobe Thomas 60-yard touchdown pass from Scott with 40 seconds left in the opening frame to go up 14-7.

The Wildcats added a pair of touchdowns in the second quarter, a Thomas two-yard run followed by a Joe Duncan 60-yard pass from Scott to take a 28-7 advantage.

Shelbyville Central scored before the half when Cunningham hooked up with Young on a 79-yard pass play to cut the lead to 28-13 at the intermission.

“Like I said, we had some blown coverages in the first half but that’s something we will work on,” Puckett said. “We thought we had some good stuff coming out at halftime and we ended up hitting some of it later, but we really needed to score on that opening drive of the second half and we just didn’t.”

Chadwick connected on a 31-yard field goal midway through the third quarter, then Thomas added a two-yard TD run to account for all the scoring in the second half.

“One good that came out of this game was as a coaching staff we saw a lot of things we need to work on as that’s what we will do,” Puckett said.

The Eagles travel to Columbia Academy on Friday night for a 7 p.m. kickoff.

Shelbyville 7 6 0 0 - 13

Tullahoma 14 14 3 7 - 38

First Quarter

T – Brody Melton 61 pass from Ryan Scott (Justus Chadwick kick) 10:44.

SC – Kade Cunningham 6 run (Harrison Canter kick) 5:08.

T – Jakobe Thomas 60 Pass from Scott (Chadwick kick) 0:40.

Second Quarter

T – Thomas 2 run (Chadwick kick) 7:05.

T – Joe Duncan 50 pass from Scott (Chadwick kick) 3:43.

SC – Lakota Young 79 pass from Cunningham (run failed) 2:48.

Third Quarter

T – Chadwick 31 field goal 4:30.

Fourth Quarter

T – Thomas 2 run (Chadwick kick) 8:40.

THE YARD STICK

SC T

Rushing Yards 141 165

Passing Yards 155 182

Total Yards 296 347

First Downs 15 14

Penalties-Yards 4/27 5/55

Turnovers 1 0

3rd Down Conv. 3 1

4th Down Conv. 3 2