Valdosta rallies for big win

By Christian Malone

October 06, 2007 03:12 am

— VALDOSTA — Good football teams find ways to win. Valdosta did Friday night.
Valdosta escaped a tough football battle with a 27-26 victory over Tift County Friday night at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium.
Curtis Weatherspoon’s block on an extra point with 2:18 left enabled the Wildcats to escape with a big Region 1-AAAAA victory, and improve to 5-1 (2-0 region).
“I was real proud of the way we came back and won this game,” Valdosta head coach Rick Tomberlin said. “Tift County’s a real good football team, and we were missing two starters on defense. But we came back, and made some big plays on both sides of the ball. I’m real proud of this team.”
With Valdosta leading 27-20, Tift County staged a late scoring drive. Kaream Hess’ 1-yard run with 2:18 left cut the lead to 27-26. Tift opted to kick the extra point.
The snap was good, the hold was good. But Weatherspoon broke through the line, leaped, and tipped Tift kicker Jordan West’s kick into the air, and well short of the goalposts, keeping the score 27-26.
Valdosta’s Dontavius Sapp recovered the onside kick, then three straight David Arnold carries killed most of the clock. Kyle Rowe got off a 49-yard punt, pinning the Blue Devils at their own 12 with 5.4 seconds left. A Blue Devil screen pass was stopped at the Tift 25 on the final play of the game, and the Wildcats walked away winners.
Valdosta struggled early on, trailing 14-0 at one point. The Wildcats rallied and took a 19-14 lead early in the fourth quarter, only to have Tift respond with a touchdown to retake the lead, 20-19, with 7:07 remaining.
Valdosta responded with the winning drive. Arnold kept the drive alive with a four-yard run on third-and-3, then had runs of 14 and three yards to move the ball into Blue Devil territory.
Facing third-and-7 at the Tift 37, quarterback Michael Turner handed off to Arnold, who went right, then handed off to Perry King on a reverse. King raced around the corner, got a big block, and sprinted down the field untouched into the end zone to make it 25-20. Valdosta went for the two-point conversion, and Turner ran the ball in to make it 27-20.
That set the stage for the game’s thrilling end.
Tift dominated most of the first half, though they only had a 14-13 halftime lead. The Blue Devils gained over 200 yards on the Wildcat defense. Hess had only five fewer yards of total offense than the entire Valdosta team in the first half.
“We didn’t play well (early on),” Tomberlin said. “I think everybody wanted it so bad that they tried to do too much.”
On their first possession, the Blue Devils drove 75 yards in 11 plays, and looked ready to score. But Hess was stuffed on fourth-and-1 at the 5, and Valdosta escaped. Tift got the ball back quickly, when Turner was picked off by A.J. Brown, who brought the ball back to the Valdosta 25. But the Wildcats dodged another bullet when Jordan West missed a 44-yard field goal.
The Wildcats would not dodge a third bullet though, after Tift’s Micah McCant recovered a fumble on the VHS 20. On the next play, quarterback Malcom Dixon threw a middle screen to Justin Wilson. Wilson found open field, and raced into the end zone. West’s extra point gave Tift a 7-0 lead.
At the beginning of the second quarter, Tift staged a 14-play, 63-yard drive to double its lead. Dixon kept the drive alive with a three-yard run on fourth-and-2. Four plays later, the Blue Devils faced another fourth down, this time needing 10 yards. Tift’s Jared Davis got behind the cornerback, and Dixon found him wide open in the end zone for a 28-yard touchdown pass, making it 14-0.
Valdosta got on the board with 3:15 left in the first half. Tavoris Belcher had a 22-yard run and caught a 13-yard pass to move the ball into the red zone. Then, one play after an intentional grounding penalty put the Wildcats in a third-and-26 hole from the 28, Turner fired a strike into the end zone. Belcher leaped and hauled in the pass for the touchdown, cutting Tift’s lead to 14-7.
In the final minute of the half, with the ball at the Wildcat 33, Tift tried to move into position for more points. But Valdosta cornerback Kevin Stokes picked off Dixon’s pass, and returned it all the way to the Blue Devil 32. Turner’s 21-yard pass to Arnold and a three-yard run put the Wildcats at the 8-yard line with nine seconds left in the half. On the next play, Turner found Belcher again in the end zone for his second touchdown. But the extra point went wide right, and Tift held a 14-13 lead at halftime.
“At one point, they led 14-0 and had all the momentum in the world,” Tomberlin said. “But scored, and then Kevin’s interception was big, and we were able to score right before halftime.”
At the end of the third quarter, Valdosta drove into Tift territory, thanks in part to a 29-yard pass from Turner to Marcus Ewings. Arnold kept the drive alive with a four-yard gain on fourth-and-1 from the Blue Devil 5, then dove in on the next play to give Valdosta its first lead of the night. But Marcus McNair dropped a low throw on a two-point conversion pass, and the score remained 19-14 with 11:20 left in the game.
Four minutes later, Tift’s Tabias Walker recovered a fumble at the Valdosta 39. That led to a 7-yard run by Hess, making it 20-19. Tift’s two-point pass fell incomplete.
But Valdosta came right back, driving down the field into Blue Devil territory, and King put Valdosta ahead to stay with the touchdown on his first carry of the season.
Valdosta will travel to Warner Robins next Saturday for another 1-AAAAA battle.

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