Sa vs. Leake: Week 3

Vols Suffer Road Loss

MADDEN – Playing with a sophomore backup quarterback in a tough road environment here at rain-soaked Thaggard Field, Starkville Academy stayed within striking distance of homestanding Leake Academy for the first three quarters Friday night.

That all changed in a matter of seconds. That’s how long it took Leake’s Matthan Weaver to haul in a punt and return it 36-yards for a touchdown that turned an eight-point lead into a 15-point one. The Rebels went on to win 35-19, earning a bit of payback after losing a pair of games to the Vols a year ago.

That play - the first of the fourth quarter - didn’t win the game for Leake. It did, however, seal the deal for all intents and purposes.

“We weren’t done fighting, we kept fighting like we had been doing the entire game,” SA coach Chase Nicholson said afterward. “But (punt return) made it a two-score game and shortly after that it became a three-score game. It was huge momentum swing, no doubt.”

SA dropped to 1-2 heading into this week’s home game against Carroll. Starting quarterback Luke McKenzie, who injured his throwing shoulder near the end of the Vols’ four-point win over Chambers Academy (Alabama) in Week 2, didn’t play. He was replaced by Sam Wall, who played admirably in his first career start on the varsity level.

Leake improved to 1-1 following a narrow season-opening loss to Jackson Academy.

McKenzie’s status in still uncertain as of late Tuesday afternoon.

“I’ve been asked that question a lot already this week . . . is Luke going to play this week?” Nicholson said. “My answer right now is we don’t know. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes.”

Friday’s game was going okay, not great but well enough, for SA through the first 36 minutes. The Vols trailed 7-0 at the end of the first quarter and 14-0 midway through the first quarter. Graham Hancock’s 71-yard touchdown run quickly cut the deficit in half, 14-7, and the score remained the same at halftime. Leake pushed the lead to 21-7 with a touchdown on its opening drive of the second half, only to see SA answer with Luke Johnson’s 9-yard touchdown run a little over three minutes later to make it 21-13.

That’s where the score still stood when SA was forced to punt from inside its own 5-yard line. Nathan Miller, with his heels nearly touching the back of the end zone, snagged the snap, took a couple of steps and booted the ball down the middle of the field. Weaver, who had caught a 50-yard touchdown pass from quarterback George Wilcox in the second quarter, reeled in the ball and took off to his left where a perfectly-executed wall was taking shape. The rest is history.

A few minutes later, scatback Garrett Adcock added his second touchdown run of the evening, this one from 30 yards out, to make it 35-13 Leake. SA responded with a one-yard touchdown by Wall a couple of minutes later, but it was a case of too little, too late.

“I’m very proud of our effort,” Nicholson said. “One of the things we talked to our guys about before the game was go play hard on every single snap, and that’s what they did. We left a few plays out there on offense and defense, and the one big one on special teams. That’s football.”

Leake finished with 432 of total offense, while SA had 298. Wilcox, a strong-armed signal-caller who threw for 3,098 yards and 29 touchdowns a year ago as a sophomore while emerging as one of the top MAIS quarterbacks, completed 15-of-28 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns. Meanwhile, Wall, a starter on the junior high team the past two seasons, completed 12-of-17 passes for 125 yards in his varsity debut – spreading the ball to six different receivers.

He was picked off once as was Wilcox, with both of those interceptions occurring on back-to-back possessions prior to halftime.

“I just told him go to work and do what you do,” Nicholson said. “I told him I would do everything I could do to take care of him and make sure to set him up for success . . . everything we do will be something you’re capable of doing. I thought he captioned it really well. He made plays. He took us down the field. He was cool, he was calm. Everything we asked him to do he did it.”

The team gave Wall a quick ovation at the conclusion of Nicholson’s post-game talk on the field. Shortly thereafter, Nicholson hugged Wall and told him “he was proud of him.”

Said Wall: “I was nervous but I got a lot of encouragement from my teammates, then the excitement outweighed the nervousness. I’d give myself a B-.”

Johnson rushed for a team-high 117 yards on 19 carries, including a 67-yarder that set up his touchdown run. Meanwhile, Hancock finished with 86 yards on nine carries. The Vols rushed for over 200 yards as a team yet finished with a net total of only 168 yards as a result of 66 negative yards. A couple of errant/mishandled snaps resulted in losses of 24 and 15 yards.

“Those hurt a little bit . . . we were driving the ball pretty well on the first one,” Nicholson said. “But we’ll learn from that.”