The prep football notebook ...
Could there be a downer in a 58-22 victory?
There was for Tom Eanes and the East Rowan Mustangs Friday night in a win over Sun Valley.
Tempers were flaring the entire night between the players and a showdown came to fruition in the fourth quarter. Benches emptied.
But Eanes was more concerned with the referees, who he stood beside while they were making their decisions on number of flags and if anyone would be ejected.
“One of their kids slugged us,” Eanes said. “The refs started taunting us.”
“What are you looking at?” Eanes said one ref asked him. When Eanes told him he was listening in on the verdict, he said the ref continued, “Don’t you stare at me. You’ve got 15 coaches and you can’t control what’s going on?”
Eanes couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Igot his name. We’re calling the state. He’s not going to pull that on us.”
SOUTH ROWAN
The Raiders did what they had to do on Friday night, defeating Mount Tabor 33-13 to gain a share of the 4A Central Piedmont Conference title and post an 8-3 mark, matching the school’s best regular-season record since 1984.
Unfortunately for the Raiders, they drew the league’s No. 3 seed at West Forsyth later Friday night and will not be going to the state 4A playoffs. West Forsyth got the No. 1 seed for the state by virtue of its 29-22 win over R.J. Reynolds on Friday. South would have been in the playoffs had Reynolds won.
“We know that we took care of our rat-killing. Our rat is dead,” Vanhoy told his players on the field at Mount Tabor after the victory. “That’s all you can do, men.”
Despite the disappointment of not going to the playoffs, South had a great season, improving from 4-7 last year, when South won its final three games to make the playoffs.
“We wanted to build on last year’s success; we certainly did that,” said Vanhoy. “We’ve got some awfully proud seniors that have been part of the turnaround. They were juniors last year as we turned it around, and obviously they’ve led this year.”
Vanhoy took the turnaround back to the end of the 1998 season, when the Raiders fell 56-7 at Mount Tabor and finished 2-9.
“We talked that night about what it was going to take to turn things around and start heading in the right direction. The kids just simply said, ‘We’re going to do it,’ and they have,” said the South coach.
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PRODUCTIVE DUO: Halfback Keith Garrett of the Raiders not only surpassed 1,000 yards rushing for the season with a 97-yard night against Mount Tabor, but he and halfback Tore’ Girty wound up their careers with a whopping 3,219 combined yards on the ground.
Seniors Garrett and Girty gained 1,037 and 671 yards, respectively, in the 2000 season, and 1,924 and 1,295, respectively, for their careers.
“They’ve really played well together,” said Vanhoy. “It’s a unique situation. There’s no jealousy on either part. Both, in their own right, are fine football players and fine running backs. If they were in an I-offense, they’d both be getting it 25 or 30 times a football game. They’ve both done a great job sharing the load.”
Garrett had 181 carries and Girty 134 during the 11-game season, an average of 28.6 combined carries a game.
“When they’re keying on Garrett, they have to pick up me. When they’re keying on me, they have to pick up Garrett,” said Girty.
“We wanted Keith to get his 1,000 yards. That was a goal,” said Vanhoy. “I thought Tore’ ran the ball real well tonight. Take away some penalties, and he probably got 100 yards himself tonight. Girty wound up with 91 yards.
Garrett was excited to get 1,000, especially since he had hurt his knee the previous week.
“That was my main goal, getting 1,000. I was coming out then, because I got an injury last Friday,” he said.
Garrett was out for one series in the first half, before reaching the 1,000 mark in the second half, because he took a hard hit.
“It was a good hit on my knee. I just went out and rested it for awhile, walked it off and came back in,” he said.
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DANDY DENDY: When Garrett went out in the second quarter, he was replaced by sophomore Brent Dendy, who proceeded to set up South’s first touchdown by catching a 15-yard pass from quarterback Tim Cook and running for 7 yards.
Later, the 5-11, 170-pounder scored his first career touchdown on a 2-yard run.
“It was a good game. I can’t believe it. I’m excited,” said Dendy.
He pointed out that he missed several games this season after suffering a concussion.
“This was my chance. Vanhoy told me to go out there and do it, and I did it,” he said.
“He’s going to have to take over next year,” said the coach. “He runs the ball well.I would have loved to have gotten Brent a whole lot more playing time this year. We just haven’t had the opportunity to get him in games a whole lot. He showed what he can do, and I think he’s going to step up and do a good job for us next year.”
Dendy’s name was incorrectly spelled Denby in Saturday’s Post.
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STRONG PASSING: Quarterback Tim Cook had a solid game throwing the football against Mount Tabor, completing six of 12 for 140 yards. He and Keith Garrett teamed up for a 61-yard touchdown play.
“We’ve seen them on video, and they just didn’t do a very good job, especially on the back side looking for backs coming out,” said Vanhoy. “I thought our receivers did a good job of finding the open seams. Tim did a good job of getting the ball on the money this week.”
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DEFENSIVE EFFORT: South scored its share of points (245) during the season, but the defense also did a solid job, allowing 163 against a tough schedule. The Raiders held eight opponents to two or less touchdowns.
“You look at all 11 of them, and all 11 of them can step it up,” said Vanhoy, “and they did that in the second half.”
South led by only 9-7 at halftime, then the defensive unit helped the Raiders break it open to win by 20.
Vanhoy thinks his defense is a little underrated.
“I think there’s a lot of good defenses around us — West (Rowan), Kannapolis, Concord. Our kids kind of get lost in the shuffle. They’ve played well this year.”
A.L. BROWN
The Wonders’ defense has been good all season (10 ppg), holding eight foes to a seven points or fewer.
It finally got its first shutout in Friday’s surprisingly one-sided 28-0 thumping of rival Concord. The Wonders had gone 14 games without a shutout since a 20-0 blanking of East Rowan in ‘99.
West Rowan
West has its best rushing game of the season in Friday’s 28-13 win over Central Cabarrus with 326 ground yards. The big names all had big nights, but the Falcons also got a boost from Brandon Bailey’s 39-yard burst on a faked punt and Legrand Andrews’ 30 yards in just two carries. Needless to say, the offensive line was on its game in a second half in which West didn’t pass once.
It was the Falcons’ most prolific ground assault since they smacked Sun Valley for 406 rushing yards late last season.
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STREAK STOPPED:Horatio Everhart didn’t catch a TD pass Friday for the first time all season. Everhart had played in six previous Falcon games and had caught seven TD tosses.
North Rowan
North’s Rowan’s defensive numbers still don’t look all that great, because the Cavs gave up a ton of early-season rushing yardage to East, West, Scotland County, A.L. Brown and South.
But the Cavs, who gave up more than 200 yards in all their non-conference games (all were against 3A or 4A teams), did not allow any of their six CCC foes to reach the 200-yard mark.
That’s as good a reason as any to explain how the Cavs ran the CCC table.
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TWOFORTHESHOW:Other reasons are Alfonzo Miller and Marcus Lawing, who have carried the offensive load since Graham Hosch, who was threatening to break every record known to man, went down in Game 6.
The offensive stats of Miller and Lawing don’t look that impressive, but the raw numbers are very misleading. That’s because every game in which a player plays — regardless of position — counts toward his per game stats.
But if you count only the games Miller’s been at quarterback, they look a lot different.
He’s rushing for 67 yards per game, which would place him fourth in the county and passing for 99 yards per game, which would place him third.
That would be 166 yards per game total offense, which would be the best average in the county — except for Hosch’s numbers before he went down.
Lawing’s in much the same boat. He’s played in all 11 of this team’s games, but ran the ball in only seven of them.
He’s actually rushed for 62 yards per game since he’s been in the backfield. That’s pretty solid. It would put him right in there with South’s Tore’ Girty or Salisbury’s Ken Drye.
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