COTTONDALE, Ala. — Nothing is given to you.
Landon Ellis summed it up best as he stood with the runner-up trophy in his hands and talked about what had just transpired.
After three years of eye-popping scoring totals and margins of victory, the Victory Christian football team finally faced an opponent it couldn”t overcome.
“It felt like nothing was clicking at all,” Ellis said. “Nothing was going our way. … We just didn”t make the plays.”
Maison McCullough”s 65-yard touchdown pass to Josh McCoy proved to be the final dagger that helped lift Tuscaloosa Christian to a 24-20 victory in the Christian Football Association title.
The victory helped the Warriors (9-1) avenge a 49-6 loss to Victory Christian last season in the CFA championship and a 55-30 loss to the Eagles two weeks ago in the final regular-season game.
Tuscaloosa Christian also snapped Victory Christian”s 30-game winning streak and ended the Eagles” two-year hold on the CFA title.
The end came in improbable fashion. After scoring 82, 68, 55, and 64 points in their last four games, the Eagles struggled against themselves all evening. Numerous plays that typically click for big yards came up just short or fell of the hands of players.
Victory Christian also threw an interception in the end zone in the third quarter after a long drive.
“It seems like we couldn”t get over the hump,” Victory Christian coach Chris Hamm said. “We always seemed to be shooting ourselves in the foot. We just didn”t make enough plays tonight.”
Still, the Eagles appeared to solve all of their problems late in the fourth quarter. After taking over on the Tuscaloosa Christian 46 with 6 minutes, 21 seconds to play, a pass interference penalty on fourth-and-3 kept the drive alive and set the stage for a 23-yard run by Ben Williams that gave the Eagles a first-and-goal at the 4. Two plays later, Williams burst through first contact and scored on a 2-yard plunge. But the Eagles failed to convert the two-point pass and led 20-16 with 3:26 to go.
That was more than enough time for McCullough, a junior running back who played quarterback last season. In warmups, McCullough tried to give Victory Christian something to think about by practicing his throws at quarterback. His accuracy and arm strength looked pretty impressive, even though it was only a ruse because McCullough said the Warriors intended to keep the ball on the ground.
McCullough said McCoy rubbed his defender off in a crossing pattern with a teammate in the middle of the field. The play allowed McCoy to come free moving left to right. When he caught it, Victory Christian”s Kaleb Holliness went in pursuit and had a chance to bring him down or knock him out of bounds but couldn”t.
“I saw (McCoy) late and then I heard the coach call and say he was open and made a great catch,” McCullough said. “I thought I threw it behind him, but it ended up being a good pass.”
Tuscaloosa Christian coach Hunter Christian felt Victory Christian was so determined to stop the run it “softened up” on its pass coverage.
“The boy who caught it, that was the best pass he has ever caught,” Christian said. “I asked what it felt like to catch it. He said, ”I don”t remember catching it.” He did a great job.”
McCullough led the Warriors with 71 rushing yards on 15 carries. They dictated the tempo from the start and put the Eagles back on their heels. Christian said the Warriors were “committed” to running the ball. Even though their final total of 129 yards on 39 carries (including three kneeldowns), the Warriors ate up 5 minutes, 42 seconds on their opening drive. That march started at the Tuscaloosa Christian 39 and featured 12 running plays.
“We thought even in long yardage situations if we ran the ball we could move it and beat them up,” Christian said. “I don”t think they have been behind at halftime in three years, and I think that played into it.”
Tuscaloosa Christian learned at halftime it lost senior running back Corey Faulkner (six carries, 39 yards), who broke his arm intercepting a pass by Tyler Jones in the final minute of the first half. Faulkner, who broke his arm the day before the first game of the season, received the MVP award after the game.
Victory Christian”s defense responded in the second half, holding Tuscaloosa Christian to 19 yards up until the touchdown pass.
“The defense played lights out in the second half,” Hamm said. “We got confused there on a coverage and let that guy get loose, but up until that point the defense played well enough in the second half to win it.”
McCullough said the victory was especially sweet after losing by such a big margin to Victory Christian in the 2009 CFA title game.
“It feels amazing,” McCullough said. “We got stomped last year in the championship game. To come out and win this one is so emotional. It made the team feel great.”
For Victory Christian, the defeat was a difficult lesson for seniors like Ellis, Jones, Williams, and the rest of the team to digest. But Ellis said it will serve as a lesson to all of the returning Eagles that they have can”t take anything for granted and that the preparation for next season started Friday night.
“You have to work for everything,” Ellis said. “They better work their butts off this offseason. You win some and you lose some. In our case, we have won a lot of them, and we knew we were going to lose sometime. It sucks it had to be this one.”
The 20 points was the fewest Victory Christian scored in a game since a 58-18 loss to Tabernacle Christian on Oct. 26, 2007.
Ellis, who was named CFA Offensive MVP, finished with 80 rushing yards on 24 carries, but he had only two runs of more than 10 yards.
“They did a good job trying to keep him bottled up and we couldn”t get any big plays with him going,” Hamm said. “We had a little bit going in the passing game, but we were too inconsistent their and in our blocking. That just sort of compounded the problem.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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