Ty White and the rest of the Opp defense knew what was going to happen next late in their 51-42 win over T.R. Miller last week.

The Bobcats held the Tigers to no points in the last 11 minutes, 34 seconds of the game while scoring 29 of their own to pick up a big win for the program.

In the win, White recorded a team-high 14 tackles and earned The Star-News’ Player of the Week honors.

For the junior linebacker, it was all a matter of making the right reads.

“It was really just trying to read the plays,” White said. “You know we used to run the same offense with (former OHS head football) coach (Jack) Whigham. Running that offense for two years kind of gives you a sense of what’s about to happen with the motions and stuff. It’s pretty easy to figure out what the plays were.”

Whigham was a former coach at TRM.

White said the players deduced what was going to happen by how the Tigers’ offense lined up.

“From the play sets, you can only run so many plays out of the formations, so we tried to just limit it,” he said. “You try to check some of them off with the motions.”

In addition to White, sophomore quarterback Orlando Lacey had a good game as well as he racked up 214 yards rushing on 13 carries and had three rushing scores on the night. He had four touchdowns as he picked up a loose ball on a kickoff return by the Tigers and scampered around 40 yards to help put the game away.

When asked if there was a moment where he thought he was having a good game, White said there wasn’t, adding that he’s never satisfied with his performance.

“Yeah, we won, but it’s like my personality,” he said. “I just wanted to do my part and help my team win. It (my game) wasn’t anything really special. The line held their linemen up and kept me free so I could make tackles.”

Throughout the week last week, White said people were saying the Bobcats weren’t going to beat TRM.

This came after Opp fell 28-27 in overtime to rival, Andalusia on Sept. 28.

“Coming off the loss against Andalusia, a couple of our guys were down about it, but coming up Friday, they seemed to have a good attitude about it and actually wanted to win,” White said.

White said there some players who were down at film study last Sunday, but came back with good attitudes to practice the next day.

“Coming into practice Monday, they had a fire about it so we had a good week of practice and that helped us win (against T.R. Miller),” he said.

The Bobcats are set to square off against Excel on Friday night. OHS needs to win this week to clinch a berth in the Class 3A state playoffs.

White said everybody’s in a good mood this week and are looking forward to playing EHS, and added that maybe the TRM win will give them “motivation” to go for a much higher goal — a state championship.

White is the son of Tyrone White and Tannishaa Lane of Opp.