MACON — One drive during Friday night’s game was the perfect example of both Columbus’s struggles and Noxubee County’s defensive dominance.
With 7 minutes and 39 seconds left in the third quarter and the Falcons trailing 18-0, Columbus quarterback Ethan Conner completed a 15-yard pass for a first down at the Noxubee County 15-yard line.
Conner rushed for four yards on second down and hobbled off the field with an injury. Then the Falcons were hit with a 15-yard penalty. Noxubee County’s Travorus Hatcher and his cousin, Ja’Shaun Hatcher, combined to welcome Conner back into the game with a sack on third down, pushing Columbus back to the 36.
Then the Falcons got hit with another 15-yard penalty and ended up punting from their own territory. The punt reached the Noxubee County 11-yard line, where Columbus had been just moments before.
“That’s a momentum killer,” Columbus coach Joshua Pulphus said. “That hurts.”
It was that kind of game for the Falcons, who could not finish drives on the road against a stringy defense and were shut out 18-0 by the Tigers. A plethora of bad snaps and poor blocking compounded the problem.
“The ball’s in our hands,” Pulphus said. “We’ve just gotta execute.”
He didn’t have to look far — just to the other sideline — to find an example of a team executing properly.
Noxubee County, which beat Louisville 2-0 in Week 1, continued its shutout streak. The Tigers have yet to allow a point, and the way they’re playing, that may not change anytime soon.
On Friday, they were led by Travorus Hatcher on both sides of the ball. Hatcher muscled his way to two short rushing touchdowns in the first half
“They always call me to make big-time plays, so I just step up,” Hatcher said. The Tigers improved to 2-0 with a stifling performance on both sides of the ball.
“Defensively, they bent a little bit, but they never broke,” Noxubee County coach Teddy Young said.
But Young still noted the missed opportunities his team had to pad its lead late in the game.
“Offensively, we started out fast, but we need to learn how to finish drives. We need to learn how to put drives together.”
In the fourth quarter, quarterback Marlon Windham put several passes right on the money, including a couple in the end zone, but they slipped through the hands of Tigers receivers.
“I’m mad about those drops,” Young said. “I tell my receivers all the time, we gotta make plays on the ball. Those were great balls by Marlon. I think we left three or four touchdowns on the field off of just dropped balls.”
The Tigers did catch a break just over a minute into the third quarter when Windham threw deep to Jeffery Malone. The ball was tipped by a Columbus defender and fell into the hands of a streaking Malone, who ran down the middle of the field for a 70-yard touchdown.
“After that play happened, it is what it is,” Pulphus said. “That was the result. We just had to fight and keep coming back.”
On their very next drive, though, the Falcons showed that no such comeback was in the cards. Columbus took advantage of a key offside penalty on fourth down and soon had a first down at the Tigers’ 15.
The rest was history.
Columbus will have its first home game on Friday against Louisville, and Noxubee County will visit Shannon for the Tigers’ first road game of the season.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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