McDowell promised more than it could deliver against South

As opportunities go, this one looked a whole lot better in the display window.

Here were the upstart McDowell County Titans — powered by an economy-sized quarterback and a bullet-proof defense that had posted four shutouts this football season — locking horns with South Rowan in what promised to be a memorable, forget-me-not fall classic.

Turns out Friday’s 4A state playoff opener was anything but. The MC 11 played like politicians, promising way more than they delivered.

“This could have been so much more,” said two-way lineman Dustin Wiseman, his eyes like twin sinks about to spill over. “We didn’t play like we should have. Like we can. Like we have all season.”

Instead, the Titans played a highly forgettable game — turning the ball over three times in a season-ending 27-8 loss.

“Mistakes,” insisted MC coach David Riggs, the third-year boss who captained and starred as a punt returner for the 1967 UNC Tar Heels. “That’s your story. We didn’t take advantage of the opportunities we had. You’ve got to give credit to South Rowan for much of that. Their defense was quick and they hit us pretty hard. But offensively, we were inconsistent. You could say we played our typical, sporadic game.”

Of course, the Titans had opportunities. Good ones, even. Their defense forced a pair of first-quarter turnovers — one right at midfield — only to be stymied by South’s swarming, bruising defenders.

And slippery QB Justin Dalton — a Harry Houdini in pads — accounted for all but a hundred of their 254 total yards. They made five trips into South territory — four in the second half. But oddly, whenever the visitors from Marion went for the jugular, it seemed to be their own.

“You can’t do that to yourself when you play good teams,” senior Matt Reel decided. “They took advantage of some stupid mistakes. They did what they had to do to win. In the playoffs, that’s all that matters.”

Bear in mind that this is a team that won its first five Northwestern Conference games — including a monumental 6-0 nod over Morganton Freedom two weeks ago — before collapsing like a souffle last Friday against unbeaten, unscored-upon A.C. Reynolds.

“We’re a team that can do a lot of things,” said Dalton. “We’ve been through a lot and we came in here with our hearts high. We even had a good strategy.”

That strategy, however ingenious it was, didn’t entail early dismissal from the playoffs.

“I really felt deep down we were going to win it,” said Wiseman, the 6-3, 260-pound bulldozer who has drawn interest from UNC, Catawba and a few other SAC programs.

Contact David Shaw at 704-797-4259 or dshaw@salisburypost.com .