For Southeast, state must wait

Raiders eliminated from race for postseason by loss to LFO

By Marty Kirkland

With 1:12 to play in Thursday night’s football game between visiting Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe and Southeast, the home side of Raider Stadium was the crowd at a rock concert begging for an encore. Southeast trailed by three points, but set up by Melvin Araiza’s fumble recovery at the Warriors’ 15, they expected something good to happen.

Forty-two seconds later, LFO’s Taylor Guerrero turned on the lights and sent Southeast’s fans home unsatisfied.

Guerrero intercepted Southeast quarterback Tanner McCutchen’s third-down pass at the 10-yard line with 20 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, preserving a 17-14 LFO victory as the Warriors came out on top in a back-and-forth battle between two Sub-region 6A-3A programs fighting to stay alive in the race for the state playoffs.

“I saw there was a receiver on my side and he took a slant and I just broke on it and the ball went right here in my chest,” said Guerrero, a sophomore inside linebacker. “It just felt so great to win the game. I’m always trying to make a play.”

With the win, LFO (6-3, 3-2 in 6A-3A) locked up the No. 3 seed in 6A-3A and will play the No. 2 seed from 6B-3A in next week’s region playoffs with a Class 3A state playoff berth on the line. The Warriors last qualified for the postseason in 2004, when they won the Region 7-4A championship, but missed state while going 7-33 from 2005-2008.

There’s another step left, but by winning a game that required them to battle until the final minute, the Warriors showed the playoffs are no longer an unthinkable goal.

“I told our kids at the beginning of the week, you’ve got two programs taking similar paths, trying to break through and get a winning season,” said LFO’s Todd Windham, who’s in his third season as coach. “But I thought our defense did well keeping them out of the end zone for the most part. I felt like until right there at the end we kind of had control of the game defensively.

“Then again, Southeast did the same thing to us. They did a great job on both sides of the ball tonight.”

Southeast (4-5, 2-3) is eliminated from contention for the postseason, but will play a region crossover game next Friday at 6B-3A’s Cedartown, which like the Raiders will be fourth in its sub-region.

The Raiders, who last made the state playoffs in 1986, still have a chance at securing their first non-losing season since 1992, but the evident disappointment in both the stands and locker room after the game showed they wanted much more than that.

“We’ve definitely improved over last year,” said Southeast senior defensive end Cristian Perez. “Last year, we probably wouldn’t have put up that much of a fight. This year, our program’s built up and we have a lot of kids that wanted to work and wanted to have a winning record.”

LFO had better results moving the ball on offense than the Raiders throughout the game — the Warriors finished with 209 yards to Southeast’s 151, outgaining the Raiders 146-66 on the ground — but the Warriors were turned back several times by a Raiders defense that stopped them on fourth down on three drives in a row in the first half, including once inside the Southeast 1-yard line.

The Warriors rallied from a 7-0 halftime deficit with a 25-yard field goal by Perry Elrod with 6:07 left in the third quarter and, less than 3 minutes later, a 48-yard touchdown run by quarterback Cody Commons — guard Grant Jackson had the key block — for a 10-7 lead with Elrod’s PAT.

Southeast seemed to finally establish some offensive control in the fourth quarter on a 12-play, 64-yard touchdown drive that wound more than four minutes off the clock — Trey Parris’ 2-yard run on a fake punt four plays into the drive was critical to setting up a 20-yard touchdown pass from McCutchen to David Rayborn — and gave the Raiders a 14-10 lead with 8:04 left in the game.

But LFO’s LaGreg Burns, who finished with 63 yards on 17 carries but didn’t find the end zone from his running back spot, found another way to make a difference on the ensuing kickoff when he found a clear lane near the Warriors sideline and went 82 yards for a touchdown.

“Most teams don’t kick it deep,” Burns said. “And that was the wrong time to kick it deep.”

The Raiders turned the ball over on downs on the following possession and, after forcing the Warriors to punt, ended their next drive when receiver Jeremy Bishop was intercepted on a double pass by J.B. Brown at the LFO 25.

But on third-and-10, Commons attempted a last-second pitch under pressure and Araiza, a freshman defensive lineman, made the fumble recovery to give his team one more chance at the end zone. The Raiders picked up 5 yards on second down with a pass from McCutchen to Bishop, but South-east’s fourth turnover of the night came too late to overcome.

“It was kind of a crazy time, but we were essentially trying to call some safe stuff because we knew worst-case scenario we’re kicking a field goal to go to overtime and are still in the game,” Southeast coach David Crane said.

“ ... The third-down play, on the roll, that way my fault, that was a bad play call. I should have just probably threw a fade to Rayborn and gave him a chance one-on-one with the guy, if I had to do it over again. I’ll take the blame on that one. Bad coaching.”

Southeast took the game’s first lead with 2:39 to play in the first quarter on a 1-yard run by McCutchen, who had found Bishop on a 15-yard strike just in bounds and in front of the goal line a play earlier. That drive was set in motion when Southeast’s Mickey Guerrero recovered a muffed punt at the LFO 36.

WARRIORS 17, RAIDERS 14

SCORE BY QUARTERS

LFO 0 0 10 7 — 17

Southeast 7 0 0 7 — 14

SCORING SUMMARY

First Quarter

SOU — Tanner McCutchen 1 run (Carlos Ojeda kick), 2:39

Third Quarter

LFO — FG Perry Elrod 25, 6:07

LFO — Cody Commons 48 run (Elrod kick), 3:28

Fourth Quarter

SOU — David Rayborn 20 pass from McCutchen (Ojeda kick), 8:04

LFO — LaGreg Burns 82 kickoff return (Elrod kick), 7:30

YARDSTICK

LFO SOU

First Downs 9 9

Rushes-Yds. 36-146 36-66

Passing Yds. 63 85

Com.-Att.-Int. 5-10-0 9-18-2

Fumbles-Lost 2-2 2-2

Punts-Avg. 3-32.6 4-35.3

Penalties-Yds. 4-40 0-0

Turnovers 2 4

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING — Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe: Cody Commons 15-88, LaGreg Burns 17-63, Dominique Turner 3-minus 4, Team 1-minus 1; Southeast: Coty Burch 18-38, Tanner McCutchen 15-28, Trey Parris 1-2, Team 2-minus 2.

PASSING — Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe: Commons 5-10-0-63; Southeast: McCutchen 9-17-1-85, Jeremy Bishop 0-1-0-0.

RECEIVING — Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe: Matt Osbourn 2-29, Turner 2-26, T.J. Elswick 1-8; Southeast: Bishop 4-39, David Rayborn 2-28, Burch 1-18, Zach Harper 1-0.