Purples reign: Bowling Green starts strong, places first in its group

Published 7:00 pm Friday, July 14, 2017

CHATSWORTH — Early Friday at the Southeastern 7-on-7 Championship, Bowling Green High School (Ky.) was unstoppable in Pool C play.

The Purples began the first day of the tournament hot, winning their first three games over Thomasville, Walker Valley and Pepperell and averaging more than 31 points a contest.

That changed when they ran into the pool host North Murray Mountaineers, the first team that figured out how to do something none of Bowling Green’s first three opponents could: keep the Purples out of the end zone.

The Mountaineers handed Bowling Green its first, and what turned out to be the only setback of the day when Preston Poag Jr. hit Chaisen Buckner for a touchdown on the final play of the game in a 21-18 win.

“We saw some really good things,” Bowling Green coach Kevin Wallace said. “There were a couple games where I didn’t feel like we were as crisp offensively. We actually scored every possession the first three games we played, then we were a little rusty after that.”

At that point, thunder and lightning forced a delay. During that time, Bowling Green made it a point to finish strong in its final game.

“During the delay I thought we’d look rough in the next game,” Bowling Green receiver Nash Hightower said. “I thought we’d be cramping up, but we looked good. We wanted to end on a good note.”

When play resumed, Bowling Green put the finishing touches on a pool championship beating Coahulla Creek 37-7.

Bowling Green coaches chose Hightower as the pool MVP.

“He’s proven to be reliable,” Wallace said. “He’s a guy that understands how to run routes and how to get into open areas. He’s a good athlete and very reliable in terms of catching the football.”

Hightower passed on the credit to the others around him.

“Our quarterback looked very good today, threw a lot of good balls and me and all the guys made the catches,” Hightower said.

The pool title ended up coming down a two-point conversion try in the game between Bowling Green and Pepperell. Pepperell scored a late touchdown and went for what would’ve been a winning conversion. Bowling Green was able to make the defensive play to seal the win 27-26.

“That two-point conversion is a 15-year throw, that’s not easy for anybody. But I’m glad we made that play,” Wallace said. “We beat them in a very similar manner to how we lost to North Murray, the last play of the game. That’s how it goes sometimes, sometimes you make those and plays and sometimes you don’t. I’m just glad the one that ended up biggest the most important one went in our favor.”

Mountaineers shake off losses

North Murray started its day strong, scoring a 38-8 win over rival Coahulla Creek, but the day soon turned south.

The Mountaineers lost back-to-back games 39-19 to Pepperell and 29-20 to Thomasville and were faced with trying to turn it around against a Purples team that was rolling and boasted a tremendous skill group from a team that was a 15-0 state champion in 2016.

To turn its day around, North Murray turned things up defensively.

“We started off playing good but the next two games we struggled, couldn’t stop anybody,” North Murray coach Preston Poag said. “We got a little more life to us that game, played a lot better defense, played more physical.

“This thing is basically an offensive drill. You have to have at least one or two stops in these things. It’s hard to score every single time you get it. We had a big interception and a big stop.”

Of course, the offense played pretty well also. Poag Jr. had a strong day at quarterback and his top receivers all shined.

“On offense, Preston played good. The receivers, Connor Rice has done good, Waylyn James, Ladd McConkey all made plays. That’s what good to see. We got a lot of good receivers, who’s going to compete and win those jobs.”

Pepperell earns championship round bye

With the Dragons’ only loss coming by one point and a strong defensive showing throughout the day, Pepperell earned a first round bye in the gold bracket. They allowed just 90 points in pool play to finish as the top second place team.

Pepperell started its day with a win over Walker Valley 32-14, then dispatched North Murray 39-19. After the Dragons fell to Bowling Green, they came back with a 29-11 win over Coahulla Creek and a 24-19 victory over Thomasville.

Coach Rick Hurst said all along the goal was to get to the championship round today.

“Our goal was to get to (today in the gold bracket), and we’ve still got two games to play but we think we’ve done that,” Hurst said. “I like the way this tournament is run. It’s really good competition and we’ve done some good things offensively. We’ve thrown the ball really well and made a lot of completions. Defensively we are young at linebacker and are chasing too many things across the middle. But we ended the day in a good spot and will come back ready to compete.”

Thomasville got a lot, but wants more

Coach Zach Grage said his team has accomplished a lot of what it was hoping to when it came to the Southeastern 7-on-7 Championship. But now they want more.

“We got a lot of kids playing and a lot of kids doing good things,” Grage said. “We’ve gotten everything out of this that we wanted to, now you get that little asterisk of trying to win some games and come out (today) and win this thing. I think we set ourselves up OK as long as we take care of business.”

Thomasville finished third in Pool C. The Bulldogs opened the day with a lost to Bowling Green and ended it with a lost to Pepperell but came up with three wins in the middle to earn a spot in today’s championship bracket.

“We started off slow against Bowling Green, played a really good opponent coming off the bus,” Grage said. “But we did pretty good coming up until this last game against Pepperell. Our boys are trying to get over that hump at starting slow.

“We’re always talking about, don’t just play the game, be a playmaker. This is a great opportunity for that. After that first game especially, we had a lot of kids, especially on defense step up. We were knocking balls down, we were talking. Instead of being down on each other we were making sure what we were doing was positive and communicating throughout offensively defensively, picking each other up.”

Grage said he’s seen a lot of good things from a variety of players, and some growth in quarterback JT Rice.

“Corner-wise, a guy that’s really our third corner, Ahkeem James, he’s done well. He’s an undersized kid that plays with a full heart,” Grage said. “He made some plays and this has been good for him. On offense, some guys, Josh Jones, Trey Florence, they’ve had great tournaments. Our quarterback after the first two games maybe had his head where he shouldn’t have, but he came back and pressed the reset button. He’s really played well. That;s what we expect out of JT. He’s a good player, a special player. He made some throws he shouldn’t have the first few games but he’s learning when something’s not there, to find a check down back and let him run for 15 yards.”

Colts see improvement

Coahulla Creek coach Caleb Bagley just wants his team to get better, and through three games on Friday he said there was proof of that progression. The Colts opened with a 38-8 loss to North Murray, then scored 11 points in a loss to Thomasville and 28 in a loss to Walker Valley.

“We’ve gotten better each game, especially offensively,” Bagley said. “Our points have climbed each game. We have a lot of kids getting good reps and this is a really stacked pool with some good teams. We just want to keep finishing strong.”