Big-play Panthers prevail over Bruins
It was billed as a northwest Georgia heavyweight title fight and that’s exactly what it turned out to be.
Visiting Northwest Whitfield and homestanding Ridgeland threw punch after punch at each other and even connected on some haymakers. But in the end, it was the Panthers who came up with one final defensive stop in the final minute to preserve a 48-42 victory and gain a leg up in the Region 6-4A standings.
With the Bruins geared up to try and slow down Ridgeland’s leading rusher, Jalyn Shelton, senior Grayson Moore stepped up to the plate. He ran the ball 16 times on the night, but it was the final carry that was his biggest as he broke free for a 75-yard touchdown run with 3:31 to play that gave the Panthers a 48-35 cushion.
He finished with a career-high 166 yards and a career-high five touchdowns.
“It wasn’t the plan (to keep giving me the ball), but I got open a few times, so they kept giving it to me,” he said. “I’ve got to give it up to my line, especially on that last run. They blocked their butts off.”
However, even 13 points down with just under 3:30 to play, Northwest still wasn’t finished.
Quarterback Luke Shiflett engineered a nine-play, 86-yard drive — aided by 45 yards in Ridgeland penalties — and pulled within six on a 2-yard Dominique Sistrunk run with 1:21 remaining. And things got even wilder when Tanner Boyd recovered an onside kick to get the ball back to his offense at midfield.
But two incomplete passes were sandwiched around a low snap that resulted in Shiflett’s knee touching down with the ball for a 10-yard loss. His pass to Jay Jones on fourth-and-20 from the Bruins’ 40-yard line was complete, but well short of a first down, allowing Ridgeland to take a knee and run out the clock.
“We thought it be a game like this one,” Panthers’ head coach Wesley Tankersley said. “They’re a good football team and we’re a good football team. We told the kids all week that it was going to be a four-quarter game and it went down to the last few seconds.
(Northwest head coach) Josh (Robinson) does such a great job and he’s got some great players, but we knew we had to keep plugging along and stay focused throughout the game.
“We said the team that makes the most big plays would probably win and I think we had a one or two more big plays than they did.”
Ridgeland (4-0, 1-0) scored on two short runs by Moore to take a 14-0 lead, but Northwest (2-3, 0-1) answered with scores on back-toback possessions and the shootout was on.
Moore’s third score on a six-yard run early in the second put the Panthers back in front, but Northwest would tie it up at 21 with 1:04 left in the half as Shiflett found Jones for the second of his three touchdown catches on the night.
But the Panthers kept the pedal to the metal on offense and moved across midfield with six straight runs before spiking the ball to stop the clock with eight seconds left. Shelton took the ball on a pitch, rolled left, avoided a tackle and fired a deep pass downfield toward Stephon Walker, who got his hands underneath the ball in the end zone with a Bruin defender draped all over him.
“Both Stephon and Jalyn made a great play,” Tankersley said. “I thought (offensive coordinator) Coach (Eric) Edwards did a great job of (calling plays) to get the ball downfield. It’s a testament to what we think about our kids. We had a minute left, but we weren’t satisfied with downing the ball and going in tied at halftime. We know we’ve got guys that can make plays and that’s what we let them do.”
Northwest would tie things up at 28 on a 3-yard run by Sistrunk with 5:10 left in the third, but Shelton got loose on a 43-yard TD scamper three plays later and Moore’s fourth score with 10:27 left in the fourth put the Panthers up 42-28.
Jones, who had eight catches for 181 yards on the night, got behind the secondary for a 55yard score with 9:43 left and the Bruins would force a Ridgeland punt with 6:52 remaining. But Walker picked off a Shiflett pass at the Panther 24 with 4:31 to go, setting the stage for Moore’s final burst.
Shelton, held to 12
yards on six first-half carries, finished with 130 yards on 18 rushes, while Markeith Montgomery ran 10 times for 83 yards. Shelton’s one pass completion for 43 yards also made him Ridgeland’s leading passer on the night.
Shiflett went 20 of 31 in the air for 288 yards and the three scores to Jones. He was a perfect 13 of 13 for 135 yards in the first half. Sistrunk finished with 90 yards on 14 carries and Sebastian Orozco added 68 yards on eight attempts. However, after burning Ridgeland for 156 yards rushing on 10 carries a year ago, Shiflett managed just 15 net yards on 10 carries this time around.
Ridgeland finished with 462 yards of offense to 461 for Northwest.
The Bruins will host LaFayette next week, while Ridgeland will take a week off to prepare for their trip to LaFayette on Oct. 7.
“I’m glad we’re getting a week off after this one,” Tankersley added. “We need a week to refocus and reenergize. This was a big one, but we’re just at the halfway point. We’ve got five games still to go and lot of good teams still to play and a lot of work left to do.”