Gray-led Lynx leave Irish as state runners-up
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. — Despite a bright beginning Notre Dame’s state championship hopes quickly turned Gray late Saturday afternoon. Lausanne junior all-state running back
Eric Gray ran 25 times for 281 yards and five touchdowns to lead the Lynx to a resounding 41-13 win over the Fighting Irish in the Division II-AA BlueCross Bowl at Tennessee Tech University.
“He’s the best runner I’ve seen since Santonio Beard,” said Irish defensive coordinator Curt Jones, referring to the former Pearl-Cohn all-state runner who later played at Alabama. “He’s got extraordinary vision, and his ability to cut back and find a seam and break arm tackles is something we haven’t seen.”
The win was the 27th consecutive for Lausanne and the second state title for the five-year-old program that reached the playoffs for the first time in 2015 and earned the Division II-A championship last year.
In the first state final in program history, Notre Dame (11-2) scored on the game’s opening drive, set up by a 73-yard kickoff return by Cameron Wynn, with Dallas Brown running the final 9 yards on the third play.
But Lausanne (13-0) answered with an impressive drive, capped by Gray’s 39-yard scoring run — the first of the game’s many highlights for the 5-foot-11, 190-pounder, who’s already a two-time Mr. Football award winner and now a twotime state championship game MVP as well.
“We’ve been behind before in the playoffs, so we knew we could answer. We still had all the confidence in the world,” said Gray, who exceeded 3,000 rushing yards and finished with 45 touchdowns for the season. He now has run for 456 yards and seven scores in two title games.
“We knew they hadn’t been here before and we had. They didn’t know how to win a state championship, and we did.”
With the game tied at 7, the Irish had an 11-play drive that came up empty when Lausanne stopped them on fourth-and-1 at the 15. The Lynx went ahead
for good with a 12-play scoring drive and then stopped Notre Dame and began pulling away with a 35-yard scoring run by Gray, who later added a 44-yard TD run and carried the ball just twice in the fourth quarter.
“The fourth-down stop early was really big, because we knew we probably needed to match them every time they scored with one of our own,” Notre Dame coach Charles Fant said. “Once we fell behind by a couple of scores, that really got us out of our plan.
“The more touches Gray got, the tougher it was. He’s just special.”
Lausanne did not allow an opponent to score more than 21 points all season, including in an early-season win over Class 6A semifinalist Whitehaven. It was also the the 12th win by 21-plus points for the Lynx this year.
“They were a force up front, and you have to respect a player like Gray. He played a heck of a game,” said Irish senior two-way lineman Sam Stovall. “We did what every senior wants to accomplish: We got to the state championship game.
“We didn’t finish the way we wanted, but we accomplished something no other Notre Dame team has just by getting here, and this won’t take away from everything we did. It’s something we will always remember.”
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress. com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @ StephenHargis.