CENTREVILLE &045; The chemistry may be a little better on an Adams Christian defensive front this year that improved significantly over the course of last year.

And a little switch never hurts anybody.

The Rebels opted back to their five-man front Thursday night to open the season against Centreville Academy, and the results couldn’t have been any better. The Tigers had just four first downs and 57 yards total offense in a the Rebels’ 10-2 win on the road.

It was the Rebels’ first win over Centreville in about a dozen years.

&uot;We changed it up a lot from last week,&uot; linebacker David Alton New said. &uot;We just picked it up a lot better this week, and we saw what we were doing wrong and improved on it. We ran a 3-5 in the jamboree. I don’t know what it was (tonight). We were just up for the first game and played a lot better. Everybody is coming together as a team.&uot;

The change worked much better going back to five down linemen, and players on defense pursued and tackled better as well. The Tigers struggled on offense the entire night and never crossed midfield until late in the fourth quarter when two penalties on one play moved the ball 20 yards into AC territory.

But from there the Tigers went 2 yards back and never could find a rhythm.

&uot;We changed the defense Monday,&uot; Adams head coach Bobby Marks said. &uot;We put an outstanding new defense in, and Coach (Ron) Rushing decided the defense we were running was a little too complicated. He and Coach (Rusty) McPhate and Byrnsie (Marks) &045; we put a new defense in and spent an hour and a half each day on defense.

&uot;I thought they played extremely well on defense. About all I can say is the defense was really out of this world.&uot;

Had it not been for a bad snap on a punt, the Rebels would have pitched a shutout, something they haven’t done in a few years. The Tigers, though, came into the game without a starter back from last year’s South State championship team, and the Rebels took advantage of every mistake possible.

Centreville finished the game with four turnovers, including a fumble that J.C. Boudreaux Johnson came up with late in the third quarter that allowed Adams to maintain possession for nearly nine minutes.

Punter Timmy Foster had to boot the ball out of the end zone when the snap was low deep in the Rebels’ own territory late in the third quarter.

&uot;I really don’t know,&uot; Centreville head coach Bill Hurst said. &uot;The offensive line didn’t block at all. When they did block, the backs seemed to run into the blockers. The backs can’t cut. They weren’t very fluid. We dropped three passes. We couldn’t find any consistency anywhere.&uot;

The Rebels had some consistency moving the football but couldn’t get the big play to finish off a drive as they did in the first quarter. Their best drive of the game came in the first when Cole Bradford capped off a 66-yard, nine-play drive with a 15-yard run for a touchdown at the 5:36 mark.

The Rebels finished with 230 yards rushing, but some of it came at the price of attrition. New was cramping up in the backfield, Eric Perry went down with a knee injury but later returned and seldom-used Austin Williams got in the game late when there was no one else to bring in.

&uot;You start pulling in kids who aren’t ready &045; that’s a coach’s worst nightmare,&uot; Marks said. &uot;We had some kids get in the game tonight that I wouldn’t have dreamed would have gotten in. But I thought the kids played well.

&uot;We’ve got out of this without any serious injury, other than cramps. We’ve got to get some potassium in the kids, eat some pickles and eat a lot of bananas. But we’re proud of them.&uot;

The Tigers had a big turnover on the first play of the second half when Perry came up with a fumble at the Centreville 11. The Rebels were called for a hold on their third play, fell back to the 13 and wound up with three points when Foster nailed a 27-yard field goal at the 9:29 mark.