Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
2015 Prep football review
Fayetteville defense set tone for Class 7A championship run
Fayetteville’s 28-7 win against Springdale Har-Ber in the Class 7A championship game was about on par with the rest of the season for the Bulldogs.
Fayetteville’s offense scored a touchdown in each quarter and gained 439 yards of offense.
The Bulldogs did turn to its ground game a little more in the championship game than during the season, rushing 36 times for 262 yards with three of their four touchdowns.
Part of that was having a halftime lead and part of it was not needing to change what was working with Luke Rapert pounding out 100 yards on 15 carries along with Javontae Smith adding 98 yards also on 15 carries.
Another part of staying on the ground was the play of the defense, which turned back Har-Ber with five interceptions and a fumble recovery.
Joey Savin intercepted three passes and earned the Most Valuable Player award, which is a rarity for a defensive player. Andrew Ellis and J.R. Baker also picked off passes for the Bulldogs.
Luke Waller recovered a fumble to squelch another Har-Ber drive.
Fayetteville halted one of Har-Ber’s three fourth-down tries and forced two punts, earning the Bulldogs’ defense nine stops against an offense that had averaged 406 yards per game before the championship game.
“Nobody’s been able to do that all year,” Fayetteville coach Daryl Patton said. “I’m very proud of our defense.”
REMATCH
Fayetteville’s win avenged a 47- 43 loss to Har- Ber in 7A-West play.
“They scored 47, and 7 this time,” Patton said. “That’s a 40-point swing. That was the story of the game; our defense and creating turnovers.”
The Bulldogs yielded a whopping 560 yards to the Wildcats that October night.
In December, when it counted the most, they gave up just 280 yards.
The win earned Fayetteville its fourth championship in football. All four times, the Bulldogs avenged conference losses.
“It’s a role we take,” Patton said. “We started off with a lot of pressure at No. 1. We stumbled there a little bit in the regular season. When the playoffs get here, I can’t explain it. These guys feel like it’s their time. They play their best football in November and December. It’s awfully sweet. This is a sweet one.”
In 2007, the Bulldogs won their first football state title with a 28-7 win against HarBer after losing in the regular season, 42-41, in overtime.
In 2010, Fayetteville beat Bentonville after losing to the Tigers in the regular season.
In 2011, Fayetteville duplicated the feat by beating Bentonville after losing to the Tigers also in the regular season.
The Bulldogs did begin the season ranked No. 1 by all ranking services, but suffered two 7A-West defeats before rallying with four straight wins in the playoffs.
BULLDOG BITES
Fayetteville limited HarBer to just nine plays of 10 yards or more out of 62 offensive plays in the championship game.
The Bulldogs had 17 plays of 10 yards or more, accounting for 339 of their 439 yards.
Fayetteville averaged 9.6 yards per play on second down.
Fayetteville intercepted one pass on first down, two on second down and two on third down.
Those six turnovers led to a average drive start of their own 42 for the Bulldogs while Har-Ber’s average starting yard line was its own 20, which was also a result of four touchbacks on kickoffs.
Har-Ber had 16 first downs, only one of which was on a pass.
SECOND HALF DEFENSE
Fayetteville’s defense tossed a second- half shutout to win the Class 7A state championship.
Pine Bluff followed that formula for a championship by holding Greenwood scoreless in the second half and winning the Class 6A crown with a 28-21 win.
Pulaski Academy kept Little Rock McClellan off the scoreboard in the final half as well, winning the Class 5A title with a 50-30 win.
Nashville did the same to Prairie Grove in the Class 4A championship game, winning 39-20.
Harding Academy gave up a lone touchdown in the second half to beat Rivercrest, 33-18, in the Class 3A title tilt.
McCrory also gave up just a single score in the final half to cop the Class 2A crown with a 26-22 win.
RECORDS
Records, as the adage goes, are made to be broken and this year’s championship games saw a share of that.
Nashville quarterback Leonard Snell set a championship game record with six rushing touchdowns in the Scrappers’ 39-20 win against Prairie Grove.
Warren’s Kilay Cox ( 2014), Bearden’s Jamond Young (2013), Strong’s Kenneth Dixon (2011), Stuttgart’s Keithdrick Smith (2002) and Watson Chapel’s Ron Johnson (1996) had all rushed for five touchdowns in a championship game.
Snell ran for 231 yards on 27 carries with scoring runs of 4, 35 and 5 yards in the first quarter, 7 and 14 in the third quarter and 34 yards with 2:23 to play in the game.
Snell also passed for 76 yards, earning the senior quarterback 307 yards of total offense.
The championship game capped a brilliant season for Snell, who passed for 1,874 and 17 touchdowns and rushed for 1,903 and 27 scores.
“When you’ve got a good horse, you run him and that’s what we did,” Nashville coach Mike Volarvich said. “We relied on him all year. He’s a great football player.”
Rivercrest running back Cecil Langston also set a record in a 33-18 loss to Harding Academy in the Class 3A championship game.
Langston ran for 165 yards and two touchdowns to bump his season rushing yards to 3,205 yards and setting a single-season record. Langston broke Dixon’s mark of 3,153 yards set four years ago.
Langston ran for 34 touchdowns on 357 carries.
For his career, Langston ran 760 times for 6,240 and 64 touchdowns.
Both Langston and Harding Academy quarterback Alex Francis entered the game with over 3,000 yards, marking the first time ever for a pair of 3,000-yard players to face each other in a state championship game.
Francis threw for 3,967 yards and 48 touchdowns for the season after throwing for 320 yards and two touchdowns in the championship game to earn the MVP award.
He started for three years and threw for 9,300 yards and 104 touchdowns.
It marked the sixth straight year for a Francis to quarterback the Wildcats after older brother Will quarterbacked Harding Academy from 20102012.
“Those are two special young men, but I’m surrounded by a lot of special young men,” Harding Academy coach Roddy Mote said. “They’re fantastic football players, but they’re even finer people.”
7A-WEST
It wasn’t a conference record, but five quarterbacks from the 7A-West went over the 2,000-yard passing mark in 2015.
Fayetteville’s Powell, HarBer’s Chandler, Springdale’s Jack Lindsey, Bentonville’s Kasey Ford and Southside’s Cooper Johnson all eclipsed the mark.
Powell was the leading passer in the state in the largest classification with 3,576 yards, which is the fifth best for a single-season in the state’s largest classification. He also threw 51 touchdown passes, which a single-season record in the state’s largest classification.
In 2010, six conference quarterbacks threw for more than 2,000 yards. Brandon Allen of Fayetteville, Ryan Luther of Har-Ber, Reed Brown of Rogers Heritage, Tanner Knight of Fort Smith Northside, Dallas Hardison of Bentonville and Hunter Whorton of Southside all reached the plateau.
However, Har-Ber’s Luke Hannon rushed for 2,086 yards and 15 touchdowns, giving the conference six 2,000-yard players.
NOT THE ONLY WEAPON
Fayetteville certainly wasn’t a one-player team.
Running backs Luke Rapert and Javontae Smith were extremely close to the 1,000-yard rushing mark.
Rapert ended with 979 yards and 13 scores with Smith adding 987 yards and 13 touchdowns.
The Bulldogs very nearly added a 1,000-yard receiver with Tyson Morris snaring 61 passes for 884 yards and 11 touchdowns.
It added up to a prolific offense which scored 697 points, which is a single-season record for the state’s largest classification, and gained 6,339 yards.
ADDING INSULT TO DEFEAT
In Pulaski Academy’s 50-30 win against Little Rock McClellan, the Bruins scored with 3:48 left to go up 43-30 and then held McClellan on downs at midfield with 2:30 left.
With 1:47 left, the Bruins called timeout and converted a fourth-and-two with an 11-yard pass completion to McClellan’s 32.
Pulaski Academy ran three plays and converted a first down before dropping a first-down pass and calling another timeout with 48 seconds left.
Pulaski Academy had two more plays before Layne Hatcher threw a 16- yard touchdown pass to Zack Kelley with 11 seconds left.
The touchdown was Kelley’s fourth of the game, putting him just one behind Little Rock Episcopal’s Allie Freeman for the all-time record for touchdown receptions of 65.
“We’ve had some guys go over there the past few years and they know all of our signals,” Pulaski Academy coach Kevin Kelley said. “I was stubborn. Our coaches said use the boards and I said no, we’ll disguise some things. Every time, their D- backs are looking over there seeing what the pass plays were. They knew probably 75 percent of them. That made it a little bit easier and a little more of a challenge for us. In the end, that’s why we went down and wanted to score at the end to kind of say ‘hey, you may know what we’re doing but we’re still pretty darned good at doing it.’”
Kelly later apologized for scoring the late touchdown, which many felt was running the score up at the end of the game.