Taking the next step

Neathery sees Panthers progress into historic run

Benton coach Scott Neathery talks to his team during the Class 6A state championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. Neathery is the 2014 Tri-Lakes Edition Coach of the Year.
Benton coach Scott Neathery talks to his team during the Class 6A state championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. Neathery is the 2014 Tri-Lakes Edition Coach of the Year.

BENTON — Walk away from the season opener with a tie, then play the worst game of the season in the finale, and it doesn’t sound like the makings of a great season. But win 11 games in between, and history is written.

The Benton Panthers’ 2014 season was a breakout one in many ways. A tie to Bryant in the Salt Bowl and an undefeated conference championship, plus an appearance in the Class 6A state title game after many years of struggling to win, has earned head coach Scott Neathery the distinction of being named the Tri-Lakes Edition Coach of the Year.

“We’ve been working hard for a long time around here,” Neathery said. “We finally had some breaks go our way. We had a good group of kids to come through that worked hard and played hard, and did what it takes to win a conference championship.”

The line of thinking in late summer and going into the fall wasn’t any different than in a normal preseason. The Panthers set goals with the belief that they would be met, and Neathery knew his team had a chance to be good.

“You have to go into the year knowing you have a shot,” Neathery said. “We’ve been pretty decent on offense the last few years, and we knew our defense was going to be better.”

The 14-14 tie to Bryant in the Salt Bowl admittedly got Neathery’s attention as to how good his team could be.

“I didn’t know if we had enough to be a conference champion, but I knew we had a team that would fight and claw and do whatever, and wasn’t going to give up,” Neathery said.

Neathery was excited by what he saw, not only on the field during the game but in his team’s reaction to the tie.

“We were upset about that,” he said. “My players were upset that we tied them and didn’t win. They weren’t happy for a moral victory, which is great to see.”

With some of the Salt Bowl losses the Panthers have suffered in recent seasons, it would have been understandable to walk away from Week 1 ecstatic with a tie.

But it only made the Panthers hungrier.

Benton whipped Jacksonville 66-0 in Week 2 and outscored a historically high-powered Greenbrier club 52-32 in the season’s third game.

The 6A-South schedule saw wins over Little Rock Parkview, Little Rock Hall and Sheridan by a total margin of 126-32. The offense was rolling, and the defense was starting to find its way.

Things were beginning to come together.

Even though the first six games of the season were impressive, Neathery admitted that after a 56-13 win over Texarkana was when “the buzz started.”

“We were very, very fortunate against Texarkana,” he said. “We played well. That’s when everybody kind of started looking around.”

But Neathery earmarked the next week, a 31-0 win at Lake Hamilton, as to when he knew his team was really a conference-title contender.

Adversity hit the Panthers soon after kickoff.

Quarterback Cason Maertens had sustained a slight concussion in the second series and was held out for the remainder of the game.

Neither team scored in the first half, and by the time the fourth quarter arrived, the Panthers were clinging to a 3-0 advantage. That’s when the defense stepped up. A blocked field goal by Garrett Taylor that Ben Brasuell scooped up and took in for a touchdown was the first of four quick trips to paydirt.

The Panthers forced fumbles on the next two Lake Hamilton possessions. Fullback Julius Lewis made the Wolves pay for both fumbles with touchdown runs of 34 and 5 yards. A pick-six by Kyler Nitschke finished off the four-touchdown flurry by Benton.

“Our defense won the game for us,” Neathery said of a game that impressed him, not because of the win, but because of how the game was won.

“In my mind, I started thinking, ‘We might have a chance here,’” Neathery said. “No matter what happens, someone is going to take up for somebody, whether it is defense, offense or special teams. We are all in this thing together.”

It’s a dynamic that Neathery hadn’t enjoyed in his tenure as the Panthers’ head coach.

From there, the Panthers rolled until the regular season finale against Pine Bluff, when a 42-yard field goal by Grant Hinze, with .7 seconds left, won the game and the 6A-South championship.

After blowout wins in rematches with Little Rock Parkview and El Dorado, the ultimate rematch wasn’t kind to the Panthers in the state-title game.

Coming up short in the state championship doesn’t diminish the Panthers’ accomplishments.

“I’m just proud for the kids — the seniors that were here during the lean years,” Neathery said. “They’ve been doing the right things, and it’s hard to preach that when you’re winning three or four ballgames a year.”

For the Panthers and Neathery, the hard work has paid off.

Staff writer Bruce Guthrie can be reached at (501) 378-3527 or bguthrie@arkansasonline.com.

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