OK, let me start off by shining my own tail a little bit. I was 18-4 picking Class A playoff games. A pretty impressive record, if I do say so myself. Now, let’s have the “everyone point and laugh at Travis” portion of the proceedings…I missed my pick in the biggest game of the year, the state championship. I picked Lamar, allowing my big, stupid brain to override my gut and my heart. Let that be a lesson to you kids, never use your brain if you can help it. On one hand, Green Sea-Floyds was a sentimental favorite given that the team missed a month of the season because of Hurricane Florence and the residual flooding that came with it. They had players on the field Friday night that still can’t go back to their homes. Then you add in the fact that the team has almost no history of success. Prior to 2018, the Trojans had never made it past the second round of the playoffs and they often didn’t even come close to getting that far. They were winless just a few years ago and had a long recent drought where they didn’t even make the playoffs. To have the best season in school history in the face of terrible adversity made them impossible not to pull for. But this wasn’t just one of those cheeseball, feel good Hallmark Christmas movies where Santa is going to bring the kid his sled and his mama is going to end up with the kindly, handsome fellow who was a mall Santa, who promised the kid the sled in the first place (seriously, someone send that to Hallmark, they’ll make that movie). This was a good team, one that got as hot offensively as is imaginable down the stretch. In the six games leading up to state, they never scored less than 40 points and cracked 60 four times. That came against the likes of Baptist Hill, Hemingway and C.E. Murray…so real, actual competition that hits back and stuff. They have a lot of weapons but Jaquan Dixon is a human lightning bolt with lawnmower blades for arms and I’ve heard a lot of good things about QB Bubba Elliot, whose name for all the world indicates he’s driving the Jimmy Jack’s Weiner Cantina-sponsored Chevy at the Sugar Tit dirt track. They play real defense too, as evidenced by their blowout of Baptist Hill. Despite all that, and despite the fact that Lamar narrowly got by Dixie in a turnover-marred game the week before, I just talked myself into believing the Silver Foxes would win the day. They certainly have more title game experience as no player on the team has ever known anything but playing for a state crown. The other factor is that they are so stinking good against the run. Nobody runs the ball on Lamar and that has been Green Sea’s bread-and-butter all year. Their one loss in the last two years came to Gray Collegiate early in the season. Gray throws the ball and had success through the air that night, but even in that loss there were extenuating circumstances. Lamar had been off the field for two weeks because of the hurricane (Gray had not) and their QB Cam Galloway was injured that night and lost for the year. Dixie had as strong a power running game as anybody, what with their gigundous 240-pound running back and senior-laden line, and they didn’t crack 100 total yards. Given all that, I figured the Silver Foxes would grind out a close, low-scoring game.
And I was wrong. Now, Green Sea did mix in a bit of a passing attack and some gadget plays that worked, but in the first half they pretty much did what no one else has done in running for well over 200 yards…on Lamar…in two quarters of football. They had over 300 yards of total offense and scored on four straight possessions to take a 26-12 lead into the break. My double-secret embedded Lamar informant said Wallace just has that “it” factor. Said he actually reminded him of Galloway. He said Dixon was a total stud and that Lamar had an un-Lamar-like half defensively, trying to arm-tackle Dixon and getting run over and through in the process. He ran for almost 250, which is more than Wagener-Salley and Dixie had in total yardage against Lamar COMBINED! Now, Green Sea doesn’t always run straight at you the way Dixie does. They run option, they run jet sweeps, they run some old double-handoff stuff…lots of formations too. Double tight with a single back, double wing scrum stuff, shotgun with two backs…you name a manner in which they might hand or pitch the ball to somebody and they apparently do it. They aren’t huge up front, but their kids are tough as nails and they have serious speed to the corners with which they were able to exploit everyone, even Lamar. Certainly, Lamar didn’t play its cleanest game. They had three interceptions, put the ball on the ground a couple of other times and weren’t their usual selves in the tackling department, at least in the first half. They also turned it over down in Green Sea territory, which is also odd, since they generally finish in those circumstances. After a terribly lackluster first half, they moved the ball considerably better in the second half, but kept undercutting themselves with turnovers. Green Sea didn’t do much of anything in the second half offensively and I read three different descriptions of why that happened. My informant said Lamar didn’t really make any adjustments, they just started wrapping up and tackling better. I saw an interview with Green Sea Coach Donnie Kiefer where he said he went very conservative to work clock and protect the lead and I saw one newspaper account that said Lamar started crowding the box. Take your pick, but the Trojans didn’t threaten to score in the second half. It looked more like the Lamar we’re accustomed to, but by then they were in a hole and in trying to catch up, they took some risks and paid in the form or turnovers. They scored a touchdown to get within a score with under four minutes to play, then stuffed a Green Sea attempt to ice the game late, where the Trojans opted to go for it on fourth-and-an-inch deep in their own territory. That could have seriously blown up in their faces and ended the feel good story, but they held, getting a sack on fourth down with eight seconds left to clinch it. They made the plays early and held on late to win it all. The thing is, neither of these teams is likely to go anywhere. Lamar only had a handful of seniors this year, though one of those was super-studly RB Jacquez Lucas, who concluded his Lamar career with more than 200 yards on the ground Friday night. As for Green Sea-Floyds, they are no longer an also-ran, afterthought, “hey let’s schedule them for homecoming” program. They are champions. They went through hell this year to get there and are very worthy of bringing the big trophy home. Kiefer has done a masterful job, Dixon is only a sophomore and Elliot and junior, so they will enter the 2019 season as favorites to win the lowerstate title and be back in Columbia. I’ll have an end-of-season top 10 and some other notes later this week. Until then, congrats to the Trojans.
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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