BY STEVE HANF
SALISBURY POST

MOORESVILLE — In five minutes, the South Rowan Raiders raced to a 14-0 lead before a stunned Blue Devil homecoming crowd.

In about five seconds, Mooresville’s Chris Winford returned a punt 73 yards for a touchdown, abruptly shifting the course of the game.

Riding the coattails of a three-quarter long momentum swing, the Blue Devils scored 34 unanswered points and romped to a 34-14 victory in the contest of nonconference neighbors.

“I felt we’re the type of team that, if stuff like that happens, we could shake it off and come back the next play,” South senior David Ritchie said. “In tonight’s case, we weren’t able to do that.”

Winford’s electrifying return only put six points on the board, as South’s Keith Clark blocked the first of two extra-point kicks to keep the Blue Devils trailing 14-6. It didn’t matter a bit, though. The tide had turned, and Mooresville (3-1) methodically mauled South over the final 36 minutes.

Winford’s huge play nearly went for naught. As South kicker Pat Edwards dropped back from his own 35-yard line to punt it away, a pair of Mooresville players slammed into him, crumpling him to the ground. He managed to get the kick away — with the Blue Devils not deflecting it — and Winford caught it at the 27.

He broke through the first wave of Raiders, then saw nothing but blue shirts by the time he reached the 25-yard line: South’s players seemingly had stopped, anticipating the roughing the kicker call.

It didn’t come, explained Raiders head coach Rick Vanhoy, because the officials said the Mooresville player was blocked into Edwards.

“He does a great job of getting the punt off, and I don’t know if they (Raiders) saw him laying there and thought we got a penalty or what, but they’ve got to get down the field and make a tackle and let the referees call the game,” Vanhoy said. “I kind of had the same sense, but those are judgment calls. That’s not what beat us.”

It sure helped, though. The play came with 4 seconds remaining in the first quarter. In that period, South had out-gained Mooresville 112 yards to 15. The Raiders scored on Henry Norman’s 50-yard dash down the left sideline just two minutes into the game. A Blue Devil fumble on the next drive set up Norman’s 1-yard plunge.

Following that offensive explosion, South gained just 93 yards the rest of the way. Mooresville, after its 15 yards on nine plays from scrimmage, finished with 239 yards of total offense.

“When you get that, it seems to produce momentum on both sides of the football,” Blue Devils head coach Mike Carter said of the punt return. “At that time, too, our defense really turned it up. The better things went for us on offense, the better things went on defense.”

The wheels fell off quickly for the Raiders. On their first drive after the punt return, they had a first down called back on a penalty, a dropped pass, a fumbled hand-off and two receivers who ran to the same spot in the secondary on third-and-long. Andrew Morgan’s pass fell incomplete amid five defenders and South had to punt again.

On Mooresville’s next play, senior quarterback Patrick Marsh took a simple option play and turned it into a 62-yard gain when he split two would-be tacklers at the line. Raider linebacker Brad Lanning ran him down at the 14, but the Devils found the end zone three players later.

“When you run a triple option, there are times when a guy makes a little bit of a mistake and you slip by him,” Carter said. “The quarterback broke it on the triple option a couple times and those were big plays.”

The score stayed 14-12 after a failed two-point try, but South fumbled on the 10-yard line to open — and close — its next series, setting up Mooresville with first-and-goal. Marsh hit Sky McCombs on a 7-yard TD, and McCombs then took a fake PAT try, ran to the 2-yard line and tossed a shovel pass to David Bowles for a 20-14 edge heading into the half.

Still, all was not lost. Ritchie infused the South defense with a burst of energy to open the third quarter. Mooresville got the ball first, but had to punt when Ritchie shot into the backfield for two huge plays that stopped Marsh in his tracks.

Just when things looked like they were heading South’s way again, though, Devil Tony Cuthbertson stepped in front of Ritchie deep in Raider territory and picked off a pass. He returned it to the 14-yard line, and Lonnell Dunn scored from there on an option pitch after side-stepping one tackle in the backfield, breaking two at the line and dodging another Raider shy of the end zone.

After a successful two-point try, Mooresville led 28-14.

“I felt like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna come back and win this thing. We’re starting to play like we should,’ ” Ritchie said. “Then, Bam! They get a big play and our attitude goes down again. It was like everything we tried, we kept getting hit in the face.”

With a two-touchdown lead, the Mooresville defense threw caution to the wind and blitzed the rest of the night, disrupting the Raider running and passing games. Mooresville scored on its next possession for a 34-14 lead.

“We let them get back in the ballgame,” Vanhoy said, disappointed with his team’s second straight loss after a 3-0 start. “If we can stay ahead and keep them down, kids are funny creatures. You never know how they’ll react.

“The kicking game and turnovers: those are the things we were doing right to begin the season and they’re coming back and haunting us now.”

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Contact Steve Hanf at 704-797-4287 or shanf@salisburypost.com.  Contact Steve Hanf at 704-797-4287 or shanf@salisburypost.com .