Fast, physical Jags snuff out Panthers’ playoff run
The Ridgeland Panthers’ first second-round state playoff appearance since 2012 started out on a good note, but quickly turned sour as visiting Spalding scored 35 unanswered points between the second and fourth quarters in a 38-21 victory that put the Jaguars (8-4) into a Class 4A quarterfinal match up at second-ranked Thomson on Friday.
Ridgeland ran the ball 34 times for just 156 yards as they were held to nearly 200 yards less than their season average by a fast and physical Spalding defense.
“They were able to match our speed and physicality, but on both sides of the ball, they were pretty dog-gone fast,” Ridgeland head coach Wesley Tankersley said. “I don’t think the physical part really bothered our kids that much, but that’s a good football team. We knew it coming in. They proved that tonight and beat us and that happens sometimes.”
After Spalding missed a 30-yard field goal midway through the first quarter, Ridgeland (9-2) got a 50-yard TD pass from Ivy Boehm to Grayson Moore. Eli Foshay then recovered a Spalding fumble on the Jaguars’ very next play from scrimmage, which set up Jalyn Shelton on a 7-yard TD run as the Panthers jumped in front 14-0 with 4:21 left in the opening stanza.
An exchange of punts gave Spalding the ball back with just 31 seconds left in the first when one play altered the tone of the game for good. Jaguar tailback A.J. Moses took the ball on a zone read, found a hole up the middle and scampered 71 yards down to the Ridgeland 3 before C.J. Shackleford made a touchdown-saving tackle.
The Panther defense would hold for three straight plays, but on fourth-and-goal from the 5, Moses against went straight up the gut for the first of five straight Spalding touchdowns. Kelvin Johnson ran one in from a yard out on the Jaguars’ next possession and the two teams went into halftime knotted at 14 apiece.
Ridgeland just missed recovering their own onside kickoff attempt to start the second half, but the failed attempt allowed the Jaguars to start from their own 45. A 31-yard pass from Naricuss Driver to Rasheed Marshall to move the ball inside the Ridgeland 15 before Driver called his own number from three yards out, giving Spalding its first lead, 21-14, with 9:01 left in the third.
A 52-yard run by Moses with just under four minutes left in the third moved the ball to the Ridgeland 2. Driver saved the possession for Jaguars by falling on a bad snap and, following a 5-yard false start penalty, Driver kept the ball on the zone read and danced through the middle of the Ridgeland defense from 11 yards out to make it 28-14 late in the third.
A short kickoff gave the ball back to Ridgeland near midfield and they quickly picked up their first first down of the second half with time ticking down in the quarter. But faced with a fourth-andthree call from the Spalding 37 on the first play of the fourth quarter, Shelton was hit in the backfield as linebacker Kameron Weems came knifing through on a blitz.
The dagger came less than two minutes later. After Driver got loose for 12 yards on a third-and-11 run that