After falling into a two-touchdown hole in the first quarter, Bryan County High School had its chances Friday night against No. 10-ranked Vidalia.
But in the end the Redskins couldn’t quite pull one out, falling 34-27 to the Indians in a battle for second-place in Region 2-AA.
“I think our kids fought hard and have grown up a little bit, I just wish we could have pulled it out,” said BCHS coach Mark Wilson, whose team fell to 5-2 overall and 3-2 in the region. “We turned the ball over on the 1-yard line and 3-yard line going in and those are some tough ones to swallow, but the kids didn’t give up and fought back and played pretty well overall.”
Junior quarterback Jeremy McClendon paced the Redskins’ offense, completing 12-of-16 passes for 292 yards and a touchdown. He was intercepted once. Senior receiver Raekwon Love was McClendon’s top target with four catches for 105 yards and senior running back Nick Scott led the Redskins’ ground attack with 18 carries for 80 yards and two TDs. McClendon added 11 carries for 51 yards and a score as BCHS racked up 423 yards of offense.
Vidalia speedster Tra Hardy, one of the state’s top rushers, finished with 192 yards rushing, a 75-yard kickoff return and three TDs.
“He had a great game,” Wilson said. “They’re a good team … (but) there’s no question we can play with them. We felt good about our chances in the game going in and felt pretty good coming out because it shows we can play at that level if we take care of the ball. But you’ve just got to keep working and we’ve got some things we can work on.”
After suffering back-to-back losses to ranked teams, the Redskins head south to Pearson to take on Atkinson County (1-5, 1-5), and Wilson said BCHS can’t afford to overlook the Rebels.
A win will keep Bryan County on track for a trip to the state Class AA playoffs.
“We got to take one game at a time,” Wilson said. “We started off 5-0 a couple of years ago and didn’t’ finish up well,” he said. “We’ve got to try to close it out. We’ve still got our goals in front of us and our destiny is still in our own hands.”