Big plays have been the theme during West Lowndes’ surprising run to a 3-0 start in Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 1A, Region 1 play.

West Lowndes won the turnover battle to take a 26-21 win over Falkner Friday night at home.

In a back and forth game, it looked like Falkner was on its way to retaking the lead over West Lowndes early in the second quarter.

Running back Alex Caldwell broke off a first down run down the left sideline, but before he could step out of bounds senior defensive back Syboris Pippins wrenched the football free. Time seemed suspended as the ball flew into the air and landed in the large, soft hands of senior defensive tackle Lavante Porter.

“You can’t give up on the play,” Porter said. “Coach always tells us to never give up on the play. I just had to keep running. I was expecting to get the tackle, but he popped the ball up and I just tried my best to catch it. It was a team effort.”

The Panthers would be the only team to score in the second quarter and would lead 20-14 going into halftime, but it would need its senior laden defense to step up their in the fourth quarter to get a shot at victory.

Trailing 21-20, the Panthers had seemingly squandered their opportunity to take the lead late in the fourth quarter when senior wide receiver came down just out of bounds with a pass on fourth down that would have given West Lowndes first and goal from inside the one. Instead, Falkner took over on downs. With the Eagles trying to run out the clock, Porter and the defense stepped up again, forcing a fumble and giving the Panthers another chance inside the red-zone.

“I told everyone we had to keep going,” Porter said on the defensive stand. “We had to get the ball back, we had to get the ball back. We had to score, we were so close, just down one point.”

After the game, head coach Anthony King was still amazed by the fourth quarter performance from his defense.

“We thought we had that touchdown in the end-zone, but they called him out of bonds,” King said. “But the defense came up. We needed a stop..The defense did an outstanding job of getting the ball back. They came up with a fumble recovery–it was incredible.”

With three minutes remaining West Lowndes quarterback Quinshawn Lucious found receiver Marcus Farmer in the end-zone for the Panthers second and final lead of the night.

“They jumped out on us 14 points,”King said. “For us to come on back, we did real good. The defense held its own, offense came along. And that shows character, when they came back at the end and got that touchdown when we needed it.

The victory was the fourth straight win for the Panthers (4-2, 3-0 region), who began the 2015 campaign 0-2 but have gone undefeated since entering region play. It wasn’t all good news for the Panthers, who racked up 13 penalties for 115 yards Friday. King says he has had to plug more players into new positions due to injury, which has led to more penalties. He said his banged up roster has had to hold limited practice sessions to keep the team healthy. King said they will focus on minimizing penalties and cleaning up play against Heritage Academy next week.

“Going forward we’ve got another tough district game with Smithville,” King said. “We’ve gotta get a lot of stuff cleaned up before then. We’ve got Heritage Academy next week, and that should be a good test for us, because Heritage has a good team. If we come out and play good against Heritage we should be able to handle anybody in our district.”