By Bill Kiser
sports@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS ó A.L. Brown struggled both offensively and defensively in a victory against Hickory Ridge last week.
The Wonders had no such problems Friday night, steamrolling Porter Ridge 52-0 at Memorial Stadium.
Brown (8-2, 6-1) has now won five consecutive games to move into a tie with Anson County atop the SPC standings.
“We started talking about this way back when we lost to Anson County (on Sept. 19),” Wonders coach Ron Massey said. “What we really needed to do was win the rest of them, and we’d wind up with playoff games at home. That’s why we needed to take care of business tonight.”
Jamill Lott threw for two touchdowns and ran for one score. The Wonders scored on their first five possessions en route to a 42-0 halftime lead.
“Everything was clicking,” said Lott, who threw for 96 yards and ran for 70 more. “Everything was going well. We made some adjustments this week so we didn’t do what we did last week.
“We had to execute and keep on driving.”
Lott put the Wonders in the lead with his 21-yard TD run, then followed that with second-quarter touchdown passes of 66 yards to Colby Reid and 9 yards to T.J. Johnson.
Brown also got scoring runs of 29 yards from Travis Riley and 34 yards from Antwoine Jordan. Morgan McDaniel provided a boost in the kicking game, as he made a 20-yard field goal and went 7-for-7 on extra points.
The A.L. Brown defense also got in on the act, recovering four fumbles and returning two of them for touchdowns ó a 28-yard return by Chris Moore and a 70-yarder by lineman Dwayne Stroud, who stripped Porter Ridge quarterback Devin Martin of the ball and lumbered untouched for Brown’s final score.”We’ve probably got the highest-scoring defense in the state,” Massey quipped.
The Wonders’ defense also sacked quarterbacks Martin and Ray Stanifer six times and generally made life miserable for the Pirates (3-7, 2-5), who finished with minus-2 rushing yards in the first half and 26 for the game.
With the annual “Battle for the Bell” game against cross-town rival Concord coming up next week, Brown ó a 45-25 winner in last year’s game ó sent notice that it intends to keep the bell in Kannapolis for another year.
And Lott isn’t ready to settle for just winning the Bell game for the second straight year and the ninth time in the last 11 seasons.
“We’re ready for them,” Lott said. “We want to keep the bell. We want to win that game, get the first seed from winning the conference championship, play at home throughout the state playoffs and go all the way to the state (finals). That’s our goal.”