Another Miracle

Northern Nash at 2-8 was playing for second place in the brand new Big East. Rocky Mount was playing for a possible home game in the first round. Most of the game it seemed as Northern was going to do the impossible finish 3-8 and and finish second in the league.

Rocky Mount's victory over Southern Nash last week was the first late score victory of the decade. A week later Collins Cuthrell rolls out to the left on a fourth and 4 at the Northern's four yard line with seven seconds to play and when the clock stopped with 02.31 seconds Rocky Mount had essentially won on the last play 15-12.

I know all of you fans who jumped off the Rocky Mount band wagon and said Dickie Schock couldn't coach, I would like to remind you he has won two games in the past eight days when defeat was at hand. I have seen this team make adjustments the past two weeks that were good enough to win conference football games.

Northern took the opening kick off from the Rocky Mount forty seven yard line and pounded the Gryphons and took a 6-0 lead when Rashad Hedgepeth scoring from three yards out with 7.37 to play in the first quarter.

The Gryphon offense did better going backwards in the first quarter than forwards and with 8.31 to play in the half Northern found the end zone again when Tavis Richardson had a two yard run. Both two point plays the Gryphons stopped and for a while those two- two point conversion stops were the best plays that the Gryhons had . It was 12-0 Northern.

Finally with about four minutes to go in the half Rocky Mount finally found where the other side of the line of scrimmage was on drove for a touchdown with 1.15 to play in the half. Marquavis Alston added another touchdown to his all time list and Tim Bishop prove to kick the difference in the game when he made the score 12-7.

Rocky Mount who produced 200 yards of offense in the second half failed twice to score once on a fumble at the Northern Five yard line and once on a nine yard fourth down pass when the Gryphons need ten at the Northern five.

Rocky Mount stopped Northern and a fourth and one at about the twenty five yard line with four minutes to play and then unlike last week where one giant play won the game tonight Rocky Mount looked like a well oiled machine as they got 8, 5, 14 yards at a clipped until they reached the five yard line with 40 seconds to play. Three plays and basically nothing at the five brought On Cuthrell's heroics on a fourth down and only seven seconds to play. Being fourth down this was Rocky Mount's last play.

Cuthrell hit Diandre Harris with a two point conversion which gave the Gryphons the 15-12 win.

You have to hand it to Northern they did not play like a 2-9 team. Better days seem to be ahead for Northern next year as most of this years team is a junior squad.

Hunt claimed an undefeated conference slate beating Fike 49-0. Southern Nash got revenge from Nash Central for that non-conference defeat a bout a month ago winning 40-6.

I will blog with the pairings as soon as they are released around 6.00pm.

Now that Northern finished fourth in the league with only two wins there is a chance Northern may not make the playoffs and only three Big East teams get in. If Northern does get in they will probably be the number 16 seed and play the number one seed whoever that will be in 3-AA

I will also go the soccer match. Unfortunately I don't know what time the match is but I will have those results around six also.

I know that there are a lot of people that thought this Rocky Mount team this year was going to go undefeated but I said as far back at Christmas last year 8-2. I knew the blocking was not very good but I expected the blocking to start to come together around the fifth game of the season.. It took until about the eighth game before we began to block as a team. This team has shown improvement and with the way this team blocked the first six games a 6-4 record is very good. We were a bad blocking team after six games.

I would suspect we will be seeded about 7th or 8th in the 3-AA bracket which will get us a home game next week and then as long as we last we will be on the road. Support them next week better than you did tonight. My guess there was only 500 on the Gryphon side where on Northern's side, the stands were full pulling for a 2-9 team. That's loyalty!