By Casey Castle
Register Sports Writer
RICHMOND —
The Berea football team might not be in the best situation to bounce back from last week’s loss to Walton-Verona.
The Pirates (1-1) remain on the road as they travel to Pineville (0-1) Friday. And they’ll do it without the services of a trio of starters.
The biggest blow could be that of the loss of running back James Brooks, whose injured knee will have him off the field for four weeks, Berea coach Kenan McWhorter said.
In his place will be senior Ben Pelphrey, who is in his first year playing football.
“He’s a quick kid — got nice agility,” McWhorter said. “He’s never played football until this year. We’re going to be a little different team.”
The Pirates will also be without Hunter Wilson for Friday’s game and Andrew Doering could be out for two weeks. The loss of Doering could press Pelphrey into duty on the defense side as well.
McWhorter plans to make use of Shawn Cornelison, a 6-foot-3 lineman the Pirates have been slowly converting to receiver.
“I’m probably going to empty the backfield out since we don’t have Brooks and bring him (Cornelison) in some and run a no-back, five-wideout (scheme) and probably pass it 50 times,” McWhorter said.
He went on to say he hopes to spread out the Pineville defense to slow any blitz packages and break the game down into athlete-on-athlete battles.
Defensively, the Pirates can expect another heavy dose of running plays. Walton-Verona rushed the ball 61 times for nearly 400 yards on the ground in last week’s 34-20 win over Berea.
Pineville, who defeated McCreary Central 43-6 last week, also relies heavily on the running game.
“I look for them to try to line up and run over us,” McWhorter said. “They have a great tailback who runs the ball really well. It’s definitely going to be a dogfight.”
The Pirates and Mountain Lions are set to kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Pineville. The game starts off a trio of road games for the Pirates.
