SPENCER — Supreme confidence turned to scared-stiff fear Friday night at North Rowan HighSchool.

TheCavaliers led 36-22 with less than six minutes to play. Defending state 2A champ High Point Central was beaten and bloodied and one count away from a knockout.

Then the Cavs started going backwards: all the way to the end zone, for a planned safety, that made it a 14-point game with 2:59 remaining. High Point tossed aside that piece of strategy by scoring in 17 seconds to cut the lead to 36-31.

An illegal block on North’s kick return left the Cavs at the 3. HighPoint used all its timeouts on defense, forcing a fourth down with 2:01 remaining.

That left emergency punter, 5-foot-11, 265-pound sophomore lineman Alex Gordon, at the goal line awaiting the snap.

Gordon got a high short kick away to the 40 — and collapsed under a pair of Bison players as yellow flags hit the field.

Roughing the kicker, first down North Rowan, game over. Next stop, Central Carolina Conference championship.

“I got scared because everybody was coming at me,”Gordon said. “When I finally got the ball off it made me feel glad, then the guy came and hit me and it just hurt like crazy and I fell.”

Regular kicker Kevin Rutherford was nursing a leg injury and out except for extra points, making High Point’s calculated gamble a good one. Gordon had spent all night sending short, line-drive kickoffs that gave the Bison great field position, and the Cavs risked a fake from midfield on Gordon’s first chance to punt.

“We wanted to block it. It was just a bad angle,”Bison head coach Gary Whitman said. “If we don’t rough the kicker we’ve got the ball at midfield, two minutes to go and we thought we’d be in pretty good shape.”

Instead, HighPoint (5-3 overall, 3-1 CCC) is one loss away from missing the playoffs altogether. North Rowan, with games remaining against North Stanly and East Davidson, is assured of a playoff spot and needs only one win to claim the conference crown after improving to 5-4, 4-0.

“We’ve been wanting this game, to win the conference,”North’s Marcus Lawing said. “I knew we were going to do it. We’re going to take it to NorthStanly next week.”

If the Cavs play anything like they did Friday night, the Comets, winless in the league, are in for a long night. After High Point scored on its first drive, North answered with three touchdowns in a 3:19 span of the first quarter.

North’s injured star quarterback, Graham Hosch, watched from the sidelines again as fleet receiver Alfonzo Miller lined up under center. Lawing darted 43 yards up the middle to get the Cavs close and Miller followed the big block of Jarrett Wishon for a 12-yard scoring run. Rutherford’s first of three PATs gave North the lead.

On the next play from scrimmage, High Point’s Bradley Watson lost a fumble to James House. A minute later, Miller hit Dre Byrd with a short pass that got much longer after Byrd broke two tackles and raced 34 yards for the score.

North finished the first quarter ahead 21-6 after Chris Phillips blocked Dane Brenner’s punt and House fell on it at the 2. One play later, Miller ran it in.

“In the first half we didn’t have a chance,”Whitman said. “We couldn’t run a play without fumbling or a penalty. You can’t be a champion — you can’t be a good football team — doing that.”

High Point pulled off a 52-yard drive to trim the lead to 21-14 early in the second quarter, but Miller, in his third game at quarterback, led North on a 12-play, 71-yard drive that Aundray Russell finished off from 11 yards out with 2:38 to play in the half.

Then the Bison caught the kind of break Whitman spent the whole half looking for. Thomas dropped back and found Reco Graham in the end zone from 14 yards out with just 20 seconds remaining in the half. North’s players, coaches, fans and radio commentators were of the opinion that Graham had trapped the ball to the turf while making the diving stab. But the play stood, andThomas’ two-point run made it 29-22 at halftime.

“I knew High Point was going to score,”North head coachRoger Secreast said. “To win that football game, you had to score points.”

High Point received the opening kickoff, ready to forge a tie. Byrd had other plans, stepping in front of a Thomas pass and returning it all the way to the 2-yard line before being pushed out of bounds.

Amazingly, the Cavalier offense, after three penalties, failed to get in the end zone, fumbling the snap at the half-yard line on fourth down. The defense apparently decided to take the ball all the way in this time when Jonathan Lomax pounced on a fumbled pitch in the end zone to make it 36-22.

“When you can score points, it motivates your whole football team. And the defense scored points, too,”Secreast said. “I’d say the offense won the first half and the defense won the second half.”

But not without a few anxious moments.

“It’s nerve-wracking for me, and they helped us,”said Secreast, referring to the roughing the kicker call. “We decided to throw out all the stops tonight. You’ve got to do that in a championship game, just go for it.”

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NOTES: With wins over Ledford and High Point, North can relax as those two teams battle for the second — and final — league playoff spot. Amazingly, the loser of that Nov. 3 game will be sitting home for the postseason. … The Bison lost four of six fumbles and Thomas had two interceptions. In the first quarter, Thomas completed a 15-yard pass to Graham along the sideline. Byrd smacked the ball up and out of Graham’s hands and Phillips pulled it down. Byrd didn’t get the interception officially, but Phillips no doubt appreciated the assist.