Stalled drives hurt Storm

Sunday, November 16, 2008

After a season in which the Hopkins County Central football team amassed its most wins since 2003, the inability to finish drives brought the Storm’s successful run to a close.

Twice the Storm appeared on the brink to break Franklin-Simpson’s offensive momentum by driving deep into Wildcat territory and twice Central made costly mistakes to erase any progress as the team eventually lost 38-9 in the first round of the Class 4A playoffs Friday night.

“It was turnovers and penalties is what killed drives for us,” coach Rick Snodgrass said. “Those things, in playoff game, if you have penalties and turnovers those things just kill drives and that’s kind of what happened to us.”

During the first quarter, quarterback Jake Powell directed the Storm to the opposing 20-yard line, but could not handle a high snap on second down. Franklin-Simpson’s Jim Murphree jumped on the ball for the turnover.

On the next play, a Courtney Delcourt to Murphree to Patrick Flippin “hook n’ ladder” converted the Storm mistake into seven points.

“They’re kind of notorious for running some sort of trick play in the first quarter of ballgames and they executed to perfection,” Snodgrass said. “We jumped the hook and they slipped Flippin out of the backfield on the ladder and they did a really good job of executing and they got the big

play.”

The trick play trio was a thorn in the side of Central’s defense throughout the game.

Delcourt finished the game passing for 177 yards and two touchdowns while Flippin caught four passes for 129 yards with one receiving touchdown and two on the ground. Murphree exhibited great skill on offense and defense by catching three passes for 39 yards and a score with a fumble recovery and an interception return for a touchdown on the other side of the ball.

Central’s defense had prepared during the week to stop Delcourt as a running threat and successfully held him to 37 yards on five attempts. Instead of doing it with his legs, Delcourt broke down the Storm with small throwing gains though.

Snodgrass said without the injured Dustin Grant, Central lacked the vision to jump the plays before they broke for longer yardage.

“They didn’t really hurt us vertically, they just hurt us on the short screen passes and that’s kind of where we miss Dustin Grant,” he said. “Dustin does a great job of reading those screens and without him, with some inexperience in there, it hurt us with them getting the ball to Flippin out of the backfield on dumps and screens. They were able to make some big plays doing that.”

Kick returner Kelsey Bowman made a big play of his own when he raced 82 yards for a touchdown in the closing minutes of the first half. Bowman never broke stride, juked the kicker near midfield and breezed the rest of the way. A bobbled hold on the extra-point attempt kept the score at 17-9.

Franklin-Simpson’s deadly three stepped up again following the Bowman touchdown. The trio of Delcourt, Flippin and Murphree accounted for every yard of the Wildcats’ 7-play, 69-yard scoring drive, which took just 58 seconds.

In the third quarter, Central began with the ball and two first downs and a late hit penalty pushed the Storm to the Franklin-Simpson 30-yard line after just three plays.

Powell dropped back and attempted a screen pass, but the 6-6 Murphree peered over the line and read the play, jumping in front of the intended Kevin Couch. Murphree hauled the ball in and sprinted untouched 65 yards for a 31-9 lead.

Snodgrass said the back-to-back Wildcat scores had a bit of a deflating effect on the Storm sideline.

“I think after we returned the kickoff with about 1:50 left in the half and they march down the field and get a score before halftime – that kind of hurt us a bit,” he said. “But our kids came back and we had a good drive going (in the third quarter). We threw the pick and that kind of took a lot of the momentum out of us.”

Despite the frustration of an early playoff exit, Snodgrass said his senior class had plenty to accomplishments to take pride in this season.

As freshman and sophomores, the 2008-09 seniors endured back-to-back losing records, including a 1-9 year in 2006, but as upperclassmen posted consecutive winning seasons.

“I told them (Friday) night, they helped bring the program back,” Snodgrass said. “This is a young program, this is the 12th season for football...We had a lot of success early in the program and we had some down years and they were part of one down year as sophomores.

“Last year we had a winning season and made the playoffs. This year, we were able to better that and get back to the playoffs. Hopefully we’ve turned the corner and headed back in the right direction as far as getting the program built back up where it needs to be.”