Gallery by Greg Barnett
Princeton – Princeton capped a historic regular season with an exclamation point.
Trailing Parkersburg South 47-41 with just over a second remaining, Princeton QB Chance Barker connected with receiver Jake Belcher on a 29-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass as time expired, lifting the Tigers to a 48-47 victory over the Patriots Friday night in Hunnicutt Stadium.
The touchdown tied the game and Jayce Gum, who missed a PAT earlier in the contest, won it with the ensuing PAT.
The win caps the first 10-0 season in program history, securing the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the Class AAA playoffs for the Tigers.
The final play proved controversial and took minutes to sort out.
Video replay showed two Parkersburg South defenders coming down with the ball at which point Belcher got his arm around it. The ruling on the field was simultaneous possession, which by rule gives the ball to the offense.
Neither coach received clarification on who the touchdown was credited to as Princeton’s Daniel Jennings later entered the scrum and came away with the ball. Belcher would have been the only player ruled to have been capable of catching the pass.
“They didn’t say who caught the touchdown, but the skirmish there at the end, it was Jennings with like three or four of our kids,” Parkersburg South head coach Nate Tanner said. “The other kid, (Belcher), that we caught the ball over, he wasn’t even in the picture. And they called it a touchdown for Princeton.”
Both sidelines were flagged for storming the field after the ruling was confirmed, resulting in offsetting penalties.
“First and foremost, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Princeton head coach Keith Taylor said. “Now they came over and they said, ‘It’s a touchdown, but you guys were on the field. We’re going to give you unsportsmanlike conduct (after the play).’ I said, that’s fine, but so were they, you know? So I think if you’re going to do that, that’s on both of us. And if I’m pretty sure, if I know my rule book, it’s offsetting, you because they were out on the field too. That’s just one of those things, did I completely lose my mind? Absolutely! Is that mistake on me? For sure. I don’t think I was the only one out there, but I did lead the charge.
“But as they were down there and they kept fighting for it, that’s what was bothering me. Like, you just make a call and we’ll live with it. But it kind of went on and on and on, and I felt like, I don’t know. I thought they were going to end the game right there. I didn’t know. Wanted to get out there to kind of avoid a scrum, but, man, just wasn’t thinking in the moment, and just kind of rushed the field, especially when Daniel came up with the ball and they said touchdown.”
Belcher was confident he got enough of the ball to merit simulatanieous possession, but he wasn’t sure if he was officially credited with the score.
“I came across the field, saw Chance roll out and had two guys in front of me and saw the ball flying,” Belcher explained. “I knew I had to make a play, went up for it and me and him grabbed it went down and were wrestling for the ball. Then (the officials) were like, ‘Get up, get up, get up.’ And they were talking about it. And then Daniel – we’re still wrestling for the ball. And then Daniel came up with the ball. So, I don’t know for sure but I think so, because when I came up with it, I was like, ‘We were both fighting for it,’ and they’re like, ‘Okay.’
The final play was just the biggest and brightest firework in a game full of them. The two teams combined for 910 yards of total offense (Princeton 461, South 449) with the final play putting Princeton ahead in that battle.
Neither defense provided much resistance but both managed momentum-swinging stops at key points.
South’s stepped up first with the Patriots trailing 21-6 in the second quarter.
Following a Brad Mossor interception, the Tigers returned the favor when South’s Cole Middleton scooped and returned a fumble 24 yards for a score, igniting the Patriots.
They went on to score touchdowns on five of their next seven drives, all of them on runs by running back Eli Bartley who finished with 311 yards from scrimmage (245 rushing, 66 receiving), six touchdowns and two two-point conversion runs.
“Well, that’s been our strength all year,” Tanner said. “We knew they had two good defensive ends, and they’re really athletic, and with the kids that we had, we knew we had to run at them. And that’s what we did. That was our game plan, and our kids executed at a high level.”
Princeton’s offense struggled in the meantime, scoring just one touchdown over the span while falling into a 47-28 hole after three quarters. The absence of all-stater Marquel Lowe, who left the game with a lower leg injury sustained on the second play from scrimmage, was felt on both sides of the ball for the Tigers.
“He’s the leader of our football team,” Taylor said. “So as he goes, we go. He’s the heartbeat of this football team, you know. So we’re hoping and praying that everything’s fine. They checked him out on the sideline. He wanted to go and this was something he wanted and his family, I think they wanted him to go. But listen, it’s my responsibility to make sure if there’s any kind of issue – and our trainer was kind of feeling some instability there, and I was never going to put him in jeopardy because I told him, I said, ‘Listen, this is one football game. We’re guaranteed a couple home games. Win or lose this football game. I’m not putting you out there to jeopardize your future.’
“He’s got a bright future. So we’ll get him into the doctor. We’ll see, let some expert that gets paid thousands of dollars check him out, and then if he gives him the go ahead, we’ll go ahead and pull the trigger. But I didn’t want to do that tonight. Our trainer was a little wary. He was kind of like, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to put him out there.’ So we’ve got to err on the side of caution. But you know, that kid wanted to come in, he broke down. You could just tell that he wanted it more than anybody.”
While South’s offense proved impossible to keep out of the end zone in the middle two quarters, engineering scoring drives of 80, 57, 44, 80 and 8 yards, it couldn’t sniff it in the fourth. The visitors finished with just 21 yards of offense across three drives in the final frame.
After spending most of the middle quarters in neutral, the Tigers found that juice on their first drive of the fourth, marching 81-yards in seven plays, scoring for the first time in the half when Barker connected with Jennings for a 20-yard score.
It was rinse and repeat on the following drives for each team.
South punted and Princeton marched 76 yards, finding pay dirt on a 54-yard pass from Barker to Wyatt Cline with 4:31 to play.
Aiming to run out the clock, South marched 21 yards after securing an onside kick attempt, facing fourth-and-6 from the Princeton 26. South went for the kill shot, taking to the air but failed to complete the attempt, giving the Tigers the ball with 1:15 left. A 17-yard run by Barker and a 19-yard completion to Belcher on the penultimate play of the night set up the winning score, erasing South’s 19-point fourth quarter advantage.
“It’s very tough to swallow,” Tanner said. “I’m gonna give you a series of events. We had the ball there at the end our last drive. There’s a play, one of our kids got punched in the face. They didn’t see that. We got behind the chains a little bit, and we just weren’t able to finish off that drive. Then the drive before the last series of the game, defensively, we had two kids go up after one ball, and their kid made a great play. Our kids kind of hit each other mid air, and they were able to score on that play, then the last drive, the last play, like you have it on film.
“I don’t know what else to say about it, except I told the kids, ‘Life isn’t fair, no matter if you’re right or wrong sometimes and in this case, we can only control what we can control moving forward.’ I’m super proud of our kids the way they played tonight, and I thought they finished the game. And I’m not this kind of guy, but I feel like we won the game and it got taken from us.”
For the Tigers the win ensures the Class AAA playoffs run through Hunnicutt Stadium for the second consecutive season.
“For high school kids it’s hard, like coaches don’t think about it, because we just want to win the game,” Taylor said. “I think our kids were – (fans) were kind of patting us on the back and telling us how good we were all week, and they started drinking some of that Kool Aid. And when you take a team lightly, especially a really, really well-coached team and physical team, that happens. But the kids have made history. They’ll have that forever. It’s just, it’s crazy, and there’s no other way to explain it. I think it’s a God thing. I think he wants to be glorified, and that’s why I think things happen the way they do. And I don’t want to get things twisted and people think it’s like, ‘Oh, if you believe in the God of the universe, you’re gonna win football games.’ It’s not about that, but it’s about giving everything that you possibly can to something that’s bigger than yourself.
“And that’s what team sports are. You can put it into religion, you can put it into whatever but you play team sports because you want to play for one another, and I think that’s what we’re starting to do. We’re starting to get that selfishness out of there. Because, listen, we have a lot of selfishness early on in our career here, trying to get that out of there. But that’s our culture, right? Everybody’s about themselves. Everybody wants theirs and if you’re going to be a really really good football team, or a really, really good company, or really good, whatever you got to work with one another. And I think that’s what they’ve accomplished.”
Bartley led all players in touchdowns and yards from scrimmage in the loss.
Barker threw five touchdown passes in the win, connecting with Mossor and Cline for over 100 yards receiving each.
Playoff ratings and matchups will be released Saturday with times and dates coming Sunday afternoon.
