SPENCER—North Rowan’s defense played so well Friday night, it was scary.
Scary good for three quarters; just plain scary for the last. Luckily for the Cavaliers, Pisgah’s 20-point fourth quarter wasn’t enough, as North grabbed a 24-20 victory in the opening round of the N.C. High School Athletic Association Class 2A playoffs.
“It’s unexplainable,”said Cavalier senior Dominique Bates of the narrow escape. “I can’t tell you. But we’ll work on that.”
Actually, the Cavs brought the Pisgah rally on themselves. The North Rowan defensive line dominated the Bears’ vaunted running game. So much so that Pisgah turned to an aerial attack that seemed to catch the Cavs on their heels.
“They’re so dominant up front,”Bears head coach David Pressley said. “You know, everybody talks about their quarterback, but the thing we noticed right off was how good they were on defense. They took a lot of things away from us early and we said, ‘Well, we’ve got to make the most of it.’
“All the sudden a few things began to work.”
North (10-2) held a 24-0 lead to start the fourth quarter after just a so-so night from its high-powered offense. Senior QB Alfonzo Miller marched his team down the field for two first-quarter scores, but failed conversion tries and a pair of turnovers left the game at 12-0 heading to the half.
Miller threw a 28-yard scoring strike to Tony Walker late in the third quarter for an 18-0 lead, and North head coach Roger Secreast pulled a trick play out of the bag to open the fourth period.
The Cavs faced fourth-and-1 from their own 36 at the close of the third quarter. Kicker Kevin Rutherford trotted onto the field to open the final period, but the snap went to Leonard Atkins instead. Atkins fought his way though the line for the first down, then broke free, faked the return man and trotted in for a 24-0 lead.
The 64-yard run turned out to be North’s biggest gainer of the night and accounted for nearly half its offense in the second half.
With 11:51 remaining in the game, Cavalier fans found themselves thinking about postgame plans and how good getting out of the cold was going to feel.
There wasn’t anything to worry about, though, not with the way Junior Farmer and Marcus Hayes kept knocking passes down at the line of scrimmage; not with rock-solid linemen Kevin Brown and Aaron Young forcing the quarterback to run for his life; not with linebackers Atkins and Jon Lomax delivering crushing blows.
Right? Wrong.
“I think their kids got a little tired, and any time you get such a big lead like that, it’s easy to kind of get a little lackadaisical,”Pressley reasoned. “Our kids kept fighting and playing so hard, and we finally began to protect a little bit up front. Once we did that, we began to throw the football a little bit.”
Quarterback Hutch Reece, who attempted all of 105 passes in 11 games this season, dropped back in the pocket and fired 15 balls downfield in the fourth quarter alone. He completed four straight, including a 35-yarder to Dustin Young and a 21-yarder to Young, that put Pisgah on the goal line. D.J.Fretlow plunged in from a yard out, and his conversion run put North within two touchdowns.
The Bears responded with an onsides kick that bounced to Atkins —and out of his arms. Pisgah recovered, but Atkins made amends with the first of two interceptions on the night five plays later.
“I don’t know what happened. It just squirted through my hands,”Atkins said. “I had to get payback.”
The INT didn’t get North out of trouble, though. Three quick plays failed to net a first down, and instead of getting to punt, Rutherford watched a ground-ball snap roll by him and into the end zone. He raced it down and batted it out for a safety, but following the free kick, Pisgah needed just four plays to score again and narrow the lead to 24-18 with 5:08 to play.
“We played awful the last part of the game and they played better than us,” Secreast said. “We executed poorly on offense and pretty poorly in the secondary.”
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