Richmond Hill’s streak of making the playoffs for an eighth straight year was put in jeopardy Friday night as the Wildcats were on the short end of a 20-0 score at Valdosta in a Region 1-7A game.
The loss dropped Coach Matt LeZotte’s team to 3-5 overall, 0-2 in region play and with region games remaining with No. 9 Lowndes County and No. 2 Colquitt County the playoff prognosis is not good.
But, while a long shot the Wildcats do have a glimmer of hope.
Having already lost to Camden County they have to win at Lowndes on Oct. 28 and then have the Vikings also lose to Camden and Colquitt. Richmond Hill is idle this week.
Much to its credit Richmond Hill gave the home standing No. 4 ranked Wildcats (8-0, 2-0) all they wanted for more than two quarters. The game was scoreless at the half before Valdosta broke through with a pair of touchdowns in the third quarter.
Valdosta, now 8-0 for the first time since 2001, was coming off a 13-6 win over Lowndes and Coach Shelton Felton said his team came out flat offensively and relied on its defense to carry the day.
And the Valdosta defense did just that. For the second straight week Richmond Hill struggled and failed to establish a ground game.
Zion Gillard, who entered the game as the leading rusher in the region, with 697 yards, was limited to 30 yards on 10 carries while Caleb Easterling had seven attempts for 27 yards.
As he did last week against Camden County quarterback Ty Goldrick found himself throwing under pressure against a Wildcats defense which has given up only 35 points--the fewest allowed among Class 7A teams—this season.
Goldrick wound up completing 16-of-33 passes for 132 yards. Ravon Grant had five receptions for 50 yards and Mason Wilcox caught five passes for 39 yards.
The shutout snapped a string of 44 straight games in which Richmond Hill had scored and it was only the third time it had been blanked in 83 games under LeZotte. The last time the Wildcats failed to score was in a 12-0 loss to Effingham County on Nov. 2, 2018. They were also blanked by the Rebels in a 2015 game.
Richmond Hill failed to reach the red zone all night and saw sophomore Blake Williams miss on all three of his field goal attempts. Williams missed from 54 and 46 yards in the first half and then had a 46-yard attempt blocked in the third quarter.
While its defense was holding Richmond Hill to 169 total yards the Valdosta offense showed excellent balance in putting up 454 yards: the Wildcats ran the ball 38 times for 245 yards and sophomore quarterback Todd Robinson threw for 209 and two touchdowns.
Valdosta erased any hopes Richmond Hill had when Robinson hit wide receiver Jalen Whitehead on an 82-yard bomb to make it 20-0 with 8:20 to play. A quick kick by Goldrick pinned the Wildcats at the two but any hopes of forcing a punt and getting field position quickly disappeared.