OXFORD — More than once, Oxford High School quarterback Jack Abraham has been told he doesn’t look, think, or act like a 10th-grader.
On Friday night, he proved that observation correct by leading his team to a 30-20 victory against West Point at Bobby Holcomb Field.
“Every time (I hear I don’t play like a sophomore) I take it like a compliment because it means I’m getting better at my job on the football field,” Abraham said. “I also hope it means I’m becoming a better leader at a young age for my guys. I will say, though, I think this sophomore class at Oxford is the best group of 10th-graders in the state.”
In a game Abraham admitted to being nervous about all week, it took only the sixth play for him to prove he was the anecdote to West Point’s physical defense. On a simple inside slant route, Abraham saw a defender had fallen down and turned a pedestrian passing play into a 77-yard pitch-and-catch explosion to set up a touchdown.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my quarterback is one of the better ones in the state of Mississippi, and I don’t care how old he is,” Oxford coach Johnny Hill said. “He is so poised and mature you forget he’s still learning how to do things at the varsity level.”
For the first time in a decade, Oxford celebrated a victory over rival West Point. Since 2004, except for the rare occasion in 2006 when the schools never played each other, the Chargers had their season marred by a regular-season or playoff loss to West Point. Now Hill can breathe a slight sigh of relief that the Chargers have taken some of the luster off West Point’;s mystique.
“We’ve never beaten them since I took this program back over, and it’s a huge comfort to know we can and should do it because we’ll see them again in the North Half playoffs. That’s for sure,” Hill said.
The Chargers (5-0, 1-0) built a 21-0 lead thanks to its big-play spread offense and an opportunistic defense that made West Point’s power running game go east and west.
Oxford didn’t have to punt and earned 403 total yards of offense. It also had 17 first downs by spreading out West Point’s more physical defensive front and using Abraham to challenge the secondary. Abraham opened up the attack with a 77-yard strike to senior speedster Joey Walden to set up the first of two touchdown runs by Kenzie Phillips.
Cody Mills had field goals of 35, 29, and 18 yards out to help the Chargers secure the victory.
“I really thought in all three phases of the game we were about as good as we’ve been all season long,” Hill said.
Oxford entered the game averaging 33.5 points thanks to Abraham and the coaches giving him freedom in the spread. Abraham lit up the Starkville secondary three weeks ago in a second-half comeback. He had 143 yards passing in the first half against West Point.
“We had a situation where our home-run threat down the field would have a window to be open if we were patient and didn’t try to force the ball to someone quickly,” Abraham said. “If we let the play develop, it was going to be a open receiver down the field. I just had to hit him.”
Oxford, which shut out Lafayette last week, used a red-zone stop and an interception to set up two more scores in the first half that gave it a three-touchdown advantage with 4 minutes, 29 seconds left in the half.
“That 21-0 lead was so big for us mentally because we came into this game nervous, well, at least I did because all we’d heard was we had never beaten West Point,” said Abraham, who was 12 for 30 for 227 yards. He had eight passing plays of 15 yards or more. “They were in man coverage all night so it was really about getting them to buy the play-action fake and then putting a good ball out there for my receivers. If I threw a good ball, I was confident they would be open all night and they were.”
On a night he might have felt overshadowed by West Point’s Aeris Williams at tailback, Phillips finished with 118 yards on 17 carries and the two scores.
Williams, a Mississippi State verbal commitment, had 34 carries for 161 yards and two touchdowns. His second score, with 7:06 remaining gave West Point (2-3, 0-1) hope bu cutting the deficit to 27-20.
“I knew our kids would fight to the end, and I’m proud of the effort I saw tonight on both ends of the football,” West Point coach Chris Chambless said. “If the kids stay with me, we’ll have the kind of success I’m expecting and we’ll see this Oxford football team one more time.”
West Point’s inability to make critical defensive stops and penalties prevented it from getting any closer. The Green Wave had 149 penalty yards, with 88 of them coming in the first two quarters. Before the game ended, Chambless let his frustration boil over as he repeatedly for face-to-face with the side judge near his sideline.
“You can call a penalty on pretty much every play in this game and we had some called on us tonight,” Chambless said. “We didn’t get any of the breaks, and that’s the bottom line. I thought our kids played hard, but we didn’t have anything go our way.”
West Point will play host to Clarksdale next week.
Follow Matt Stevens on Twitter @matthewcstevens.
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