Holly Pond's Trey Hill logs a carry Friday night against J.B. Pennington. 

HOLLY POND — There were a lot of Holly Pond heads hanging after Friday’s 34-32 loss to J.B. Pennington, but there was really no reason.

The Broncos proved they’ll be a force to be reckoned with in Class 3A, Region 6 and led most of their home opener before ultimately falling on a late touchdown and 2-point conversion by the Tigers.

J.B. Pennington (3-0, 1-0), which trailed 14-0 at the end of the first quarter and 26-14 at halftime, completed the comeback with a 16-play scoring drive capped off by Travis Cleveland’s 3-yard shovel pass to Cole Littleton and Trey Griffin’s 2-point run around right end with 1:49 to go.

Holly Pond (2-1, 0-1) appeared to pull off a miracle finish on a 35-yard heave from Michael Lambert to Alex Corneglio with 15 seconds left, but the potential game-winner was called back by a penalty. Two plays later, Lambert’s last-ditch Hail Mary was swatted away to seal the final score.

Despite the outcome, coach Mike Bates could hardly have been more satisfied with his Holly Pond squad.

“I think that’s as hard as we could play,” he said. “It proved by the score. That’s a really good football team over there. They’re real physical. They’ve got a lot of people they can run right at you. But our guys fought all night long. I’m really proud of our guys. I’m proud of our defensive lineman especially.

“And offensive linemen, we had a lot of injuries coming in; we had some during the game. We just kept plugging people in, and they kept doing a great job.”

Lambert finished with 366 total yards and four total touchdowns. He was 14 of 28 with 258 yards and a couple of passing touchdowns, and logged 108 yards and his other two TDs on just nine carries. His early 53-yard scamper for six points was particularly impressive, as was the 12-yarder where he spun off a would-be tackler to set up a 1-yard touchdown tote.

Dylan Morton had just two catches but made them both count, taking the first 93 yards to paydirt and the second 70 yards to the same destination to help the Broncos take a 32-26 lead early in the fourth quarter.

Kyler Chaney had one heckuva first half on defense for Holly Pond. The freshman recovered the fumble that immediately led to Lambert’s and Morton’s first touchdown connection and had a pair of highlight reel interceptions. Chaney’s first act of thievery was a pick-six covering around 40 yards. The other was a jaw-dropping one-hander that ignited the jampacked home crowd and stopped the Tigers in their tracks late in the first half.

Trey Hill and Caleb Jones recovered fumbles in the second half for the Broncos. Jones finished with 58 rushing yards, and Luis Garcias had 36 receiving yards — almost all on a 33-yard catch on third-and-long that kept one of Holly Pond’s first half scoring drives alive.

“We became a football team tonight,” Bates said. “If we’ll use this, we’ll be OK. If we let it use us, we’re in trouble. So we’ve got to find a way to use this to our benefit.”

Griffin led J.B. Pennington with 260 rushing yards and two touchdowns on a hefty 41 carries. Cleveland was 12 of 20 with 133 passing yards and three TDs.

Holly Pond will continue region play next week at Susan Moore. The Broncos lost last year’s matchup 49-14 but have shown so far this fall they’re nowhere near the same program.

“We’ve got some tough competition ahead of us. We know that,” Bates said. “But if we can get healthy, stay healthy and keep our key guys making plays, I think we’ll be fine on down the road.”