The Starkville Yellowjackets remains on a hot streak on a out of the norm warm night in December.
The Jackets defeated the Amory Panthers 4-1 at home.
“I thought we played well,” Starkville coach Brian Bennett said. “We passed the ball well, (and) a little of that was Amory tried to bunker in a little bit. They were holding a lot of guys back. They had one guy up top and pretty much everybody else bunkering in. Once we got our first goal, we kind of relaxed, but the whole game our passing and winning the ball we did excellent.”
The first half of play was mainly quiet except for junior Juan Salazar who scored at the 23rd-minute mark to give Starkville a 1-0 lead.
Coming out of the half, Starkville exploded on offense starting with a second goal in the 58th minute by Salazar, then in the 75th minute Justin Gordon joined the offensive movement as he scored to take the Jackets up 3-0.
Taylor Wise joined the offensive party in the 77th minute to cap Starkville’s scoring at four goals.
“We like to attack that is something we work on a lot,” Bennett said. “We have Juan, then Taylor and Justin that we can put up top and then also play out on the wings. We are trying to score from lots of different spots, but those three have been doing most of the scoring this year.”
Starkville fought off Panther attack until the 79th minute when Garrett Trautman provided the lone Amory score.
Salazar led the Jacket charge for the night with his two goals, which came as no surprise to Bennett who describes the junior as “opportunistic” in his style of play.
“Juan played excellent,” Bennett said. “He was all over the field. We could send him long or he could check back to the ball. He was all over the place and that is why he got the two goals.”
With the victory, Starkville advanced its overall record to 8-1-1, while Amory fell to 3-5-1 overall.
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