WEST POINT – After Oak Hill’s game Friday night against Rossville Academy, head coach Tom Goode gathered his players in a circle for a postgame chat.
His message was simple, ‘You can’t win if you can’t get out of your own way.’
Despite getting a hard-running, two-touchdown performance from running back Boston Cunningham, self-inflicted damage had the Raiders dressing their wounds after a 39-24 setback to the visiting Wolves, who spoiled homecoming night.
Oak Hill lost possession of three fumbles, two in the red zone, and struggled to defend against deep passes, which provided three touchdowns for the Wolves.
“I thought mistakes killed us tonight,” Goode said. “Offensively, we turned the ball over three times, had a couple of penalties, one personal foul penalty, so every drive I think we stopped ourselves. They had a lot of speed. We were concerned about that, and defensively, just like I mentioned a few days ago, we had to play sound coverage and we didn’t do that.”
The Wolves foreshadowed their aerial attack early in the first quarter. After Oak Hill took the game’s opening drive and charged forward on the legs of Cunningham to find paydirt after a series of seven plays and Simon Reynolds provided the 2-point conversion on the ground, the Wolves fired back on their second drive of the game with a 59-yard touchdown pass and a two-point conversion throw to tie the game. Rossville opted for the onside to catch Oak Hill off guard, and the kick sent the ball hopping towards Ja’len Rambus, who couldn’t hold onto it, leading to a Wolves recovery. On the first play of their drive, Rossville scored on a 58-yard heave for a 14-8 lead to end the first quarter.
The Raiders came out angry in the second quarter and capped off their opening drive with an 11-yard touchdown run by Cunninham that was originally halted a few yards short, but a crew of Raiders banded together and pushed the pile with Cunningham in the center into the end zone.The senior then lowered his shoulder and ran back into the end zone for the 2-point conversion and the 16-14 lead as Oak Hill’s fans erupted. But it was their last lead of the night.
The Wolves responded with a rumbling touchdown run of their own to pull ahead 20-16 after the failed 2-point try, and added a 5-yard scoring throw on their next possession to take a 26-16 lead to halftime.
The Raiders opened the third quarter with another bruising drive behind the legs of Cunningham and got all the way to the Wolves’ 9-yard-line when the ball was knocked free from Cunningham’s hands and recovered by the defense. In a desperate show of life, Oak Hill got the ball back after forcing a punt and pulled within two points after Reynolds ran up the middle and leaped into the end zone for the score and Cunningham proved the 2-point punch on the ground. But Rossville went right back to the old bread and butter and heaved another long ball, this time from 59 yards out on third down, for a morale-crushing score to end the third quarter.
“(Deep passes) didn’t catch us off guard, we were just getting beat deep. I mean it’s plain and simple,” Goode said. “None of that caught us off guard.”
Looking to climb back into the game in the fourth, Oak Hill drove down the field once more, but fumbled away its chances on the Wolves’ 13-yard-line. The two sides traded punts as the clock waned into the final minutes, and quarterback Jackson Holton was sacked and lost control of the ball, leaving the Wolves in possession on the Raiders’ 5-yard line. Rossville punched in the run for the last score of the game.
The loss is Oak Hill’s (4-1) first of the season, and halts their quest to tie the program’s best start since a 5-0 beginning in the 1986 season. Goode said it’s a painful loss, but it’s one the team can learn and grow from. It’s an opportunity to show some championship-caliber resolve.
“That’s one thing we’ll find out about this team. We’ve had a lot of success, and how do we get back on Monday? We’ve been telling them since Day 1, ‘I think we will be really hard to beat as long as we don’t beat ourselves, and that’s what we did tonight.”
The Raiders have an opportunity to bounce back on Sept. 26 at Carroll Academy.
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