Gallery by Greg Barnett
Princeton – Princeton has worked to make its offense multidimensional.
Three games into the 2021 season that goal appears accomplished.
A week after the Tigers had two players run for over 100 yards each and completed only two passes, they leaned heavily on the arm of junior all-state quarterback Grant Cochran and it paid off. The 6-foot-4 signal caller completed 19 of his 23 passing attempts for 269 and three touchdowns, guiding Princeton to a 55-30 win over Oak Hill Friday night at Anne S. Hunnicutt Stadium.
“We know we’ve got a good quarterback and we’ve got good receivers,” Princeton head coach Chris Pedigo said. “It’s not just one or two guys. I think we spread the ball out really good tonight. It was one thing we needed to work on but I think Grant was 14-of-16 or something like that in the first half. He did a lot of good things. I wasn’t happy with some of the – I thought in the third quarter we got sloppy. We’ve got some work to do with our outside linebackers on defense, but you know all in all we’ll take a win and get ready for a really good Linsly team.”
Pedigo may have been upset with how his defense performed but he was pleased with the other two facets – offense and special teams. The latter got things rolling from the start.
Princeton’s Dominick Collins electrified the home crowd with an 89-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to open the game, putting the pressure on the Red Devils. They couldn’t respond, punting the ball to Cochran and Co., who went to work.
The junior quarterback completed all six of his pass attempts on his first drive which culminated in a 25-yard touchdown to Peyton Clemons on a wide receiver screen. In the blink of an eye the Red Devils were staring down a 14-0 deficit. Still, they had their own weapons.
On the ensuing drive the area’s leading rusher – Oak Hill’s Leonard Farrow – put the Red Devils on the board with an 18-yard dash down the left sideline.
Chunk plays became the norm as Farrow’s score was the first of three in a three-minute span.
Princeton answered with a 41-yard strike from Cochran to Collins on a fake screen that turned into a streak with the former fooling the Oak Hill defense with a nuanced shoulder shrug.
“We ran that screen the past couple of weeks,” Cochran said. “We knew they’d bite on it, so as long as I showed the ball to him I knew he’d bite on it. And Dom’s a really fast guy, the guy who scored the touchdown. I knew if I put the ball out there he’d go get it.”
Cochran fakes the screen and finds Collins for a 41-yard TD. Princeton up 21-6 with 10:13 left in Q2#wvprepfb pic.twitter.com/cxoAXHoCAm
— Tyler Jackson (@TJack94) September 10, 2021
The fireworks culminated when Farrow broke loose again, this time for a 75-yard scoring jaunt down the right side, making it a 21-14 game.
With just seven carries for 118 yards and two touchdowns, Princeton’s defense needed an answer for Farrow. It found one, limiting him to 15 yards on four carries the rest of the way.
“We started putting Noah Basham opposite of (Farrow),” Pedigo said. “We felt that he was physical. I didn’t think we were setting the edge very well and Noah did a better job with that. We were getting pushed around a little bit up front and we hadn’t seen that. Give them credit with their scheme. The wing-t is a nasty little offense man and if you don’t play gap-sound defense they’re going to exploit you and that’s what they did.”
“Schematically they were overloading away from Leonard,” Oak Hill coach Dave Monneypenny said. “That’s the deal. They had more guys over there than we could block. We countered back and we had some good plays on our counter plays and our inside trap, so but you know hats off to them. They’re very well-coached and they’ve got some great players.”
By halftime the Tigers had built a 34-14 lead courtesy of a rushing score from Brodee Rice and a 35-yard touchdown pass from Cochran to Basham.
The latter turned out to be Cochran’s final pass of the half as he went into the break 14-of-17 with 210 yards and three scores, completing his first seven passes of the game.
This one is well blocked. Princeton up 34-14 on this TD pass from Cochran to Noah Basham. There are 56 seconds left in the half.#wvprepfb pic.twitter.com/TsOmwGpAoL
— Tyler Jackson (@TJack94) September 11, 2021
“We knew they would gameplan against our run since it was so heavy against Bluefield,” Cochran said. “We saw that it opened up a lot of spots in the defense and I trusted my guys and they had faith in me and I got it to them. They did the rest from there.”
Princeton scored the first three touchdowns of the second half building a 55-14 lead before Oak Hill’s reserves slashed the deficit, providing a bright spot for the visitors.
For Cochran it was a positive night and in the works all week. He completed passes to eight different receivers in his best outing of the season. On the year he’s completed 31 of his 44 passing attempts for 516 yards and six touchdowns, doubling his yardage and touchdown total after Friday’s win.
It’s a large part of the reason the Tigers are off to their best start since 2005 when they started 4-0.
“I mean brick by brick baby,” Pedigo said. “We’re just trying to keep our heads down and keep working. We did a lot of good things, we did a lot of good things last week. We’re making plays and our kids are fighting but we’ve got a lot of things we could clean up and we could be even better I think, ya know? I think these kids know there’s more work to do and we want to keep them hungry and if we do that – we’ve got a tremendous test with a Linsly team coming in here.”
Princeton improves to 3-0 and will host Linsly on Friday while Oak Hill drops to 1-2 and will return home to face Lincoln County next week.
Contact Tyler Jackson at tylerjackson@lootpress.com, call/text him at 304-731-5542 and follow on Twitter @tjack94
OH: 0 14 0 16 – 30
P: 14 13 7 14 – 55
Scoring Plays
First Quarter
P: Dominick Collins 89-yard kickoff return (Geso kick), 11:46
P: Clemons 25-yard pass from Cochran (Geso kick), 4:19
Second quarter
OH: Farrow 18 rush (Kick blocked), 11:53
P: Collins 41-yard pass from Cochran (Geso kick), 10:13
OH: Farrow 75 rush (Vargo-Thomas pass from Ward), 9:31
P: Rice 18 rush (Geso kick), 4:35
P: Basham 35-yard pass from Cochran (Kick fails), :56
Third quarter
P: Rice 6 rush (Geso kick), 3:35
Fourth quarter
P: Proffit 2 rush (Geso kick), 10:43
P: JJ Spriggs 2 rush (Abhoulhosn kick), 8:47
OH: Ride 6 rush (Gray rush), 6:04
OH: Gray 37 rush (rush), :19
Individual statistics
Rushing – OH: Omar Lewis 12-53, Ehan Vargo-Thomas 4-27, Leonard Farrow 11-133, Jacob Ward 4-(minus-1), Trent Ride 4-36, Elijah Gray 3-84. P: Grant Cochran 4-(minus-6), Brodee Rice 7-54, Jacob Young 3-15, Dominick Collins 1-5, Khamrin Proiffitt 3-11, Noah Basham 1-(minus-2), JJ Spriggs 5-23, Caleb Steele 1-4
Passing – OH: Ward 1-4-6-0-0; P: Cochran 19-23-269-3 TDs, Jordan Cooper 3-4-28-0-0.
Receiving – OH: Braylan Thomas 1-6; P: Jonothan Wellman 3-39, Dominick Collins 5-68-1 TD, Peyton Clemons 4-54-1 TD, Brodee Rice 1-11, Connor Padgett 1-8, Noah Basham 2-36, Carter Meachum 1-10, Khamrin Proffitt 2-43, No. 80 1-9, Ta’Vahjay Smith 1-9, No. 36 1-10.
