Sports

WHITE HALL COMES BACK TO BEAT LITTLE ROCK MILLS ON GOAL-LINE STAND IN OT

By Sean Saunders/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, November 6, 2009 2:18 AM CST

WHITE HALL — The saying goes football is a game of inches, and the White Hall Bulldogs got to live through every letter of that phrase Thursday.

White Hall’s A.J.Richardson looks for the end zone but gets stopped short by Little Rock Mill’s Achillies Brown. PINE BLUFF COMMERCIAL/RALPH FITZGERALD.

Leading 26-20 in overtime, the Little Rock Mills Comets faced a fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line. They dialed up a pitch to try to catch the Bulldogs over-playing the middle. But White Hall senior linebacker Tyler Robinson met the ball-carrier at the line of scrimmage and the back was unable to break the plane of the end zone.

“He does that every week,” White Hall coach Mike Vaughn said. “When you’re leading the team in tackles at nearly 17 or 18 per game, and that’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s been more coachable this year, more grown up and more mature. He just realizes what a linebacker is supposed to do.”

The goalline stand capped off a comeback victory for the Bulldogs (8-2, 6-1 5A-Southeast Conference). They overcame a six-point deficit in the fourth quarter by reeling off 12 unanswered points.

Mills (6-4, 4-3) took the lead in the final period of regulation after White Hall turned the ball over on a fumble. Comets quarterback Christian Hampton hooked up with Willie Casey on a 77-yard touchdown completion on the very next play.

Mills, normally a team that does its damage on the ground out of its flexbone formation, was held to only 96 yards rushing by the Bulldogs. But Hampton kept the Comets in contention the whole game with his arm, completing 6 of 9 passes for 200 yards.

“We had a couple of big plays in the passing game,” Mills coach Patrick Russell said. “We never could get anything going in the second half. ... We never could get any continuity going. We did have one big pass play in the second half, but other than that, they did a really good job of shutting us down in the second half.”

After the long touchdown pass, White Hall took over with exactly 6 minutes left on the clock. Its final drive took up 5 minutes, 17 seconds and nothing came easy once the Bulldogs got deep into Mills territory.

They needed two fourth-down conversions to keep hopes alive. The first came when senior quarterback Matt Taylor completed his first pass of the game, a 12-yarder to classmate Brad Bethea on fourth-and-11. Then sophomore Nathan Lee took a vicious hit but made a 19-yard reception on fourth-and-17.

“Nathan told me to run the razer which is a post to the middle of the field, and he said, ‘Coach, it’s going to be wide open,’” Vaughn said. “I said that we were going to run that. It turns out they scooted over too far and it was wide open. ... Matt made a heck of a throw, and Nathan made a tremendous catch. You could hear the guys in the locker room chanting ‘Lee, Lee, Lee’ when I asked them who should get the gameball.”

Larry Walls completed the drive with a 6-yard touchdown run with only 43 seconds remaining to tie the game. But the score remained tied because White Hall fumbled the hold.

“It was very frustrating,” said Russell, of his team’s inability to get White Hall off the field on its final drive of regulation. “We called timeout and thought we knew what we were going to do, but they executed it anyway. It was frustrating, but they had done that all year. They’re a good football team.”

Walls’ third touchdown run of the game put White Hall up 26-20 in the overtime period. After Lee appeared to have scored on the first play on a 10-yard run, the play was called back for holding. Then Walls raced 16 yards down the left sideline and bulldogged his way across the goal line.

“When we ran that ‘Redfield keep’ to the left, it was unreal,” Vaughn said. “He picked up a few blocks from some of them, but he got that in on pure guts.”

But junior Heath Heinrich missed his first extra point of the season to build the tension when Mills took control of the ball. The Comets got down to the 2 before White Hall held them to only a yard the rest of the way.

Walls was a game-time decision after not playing the second half of last week’s 41-20 victory at Beebe because of a hamstring injury. But Walls came in and played at less than 100 percent, gaining 128 yards on 28 carries.

“Not only is it Larry Walls, but it’s also (Lee) and (A.J. Richardson). They got backs everywhere,” Russell said. “It’s almost unfair. They got a big offensive line and they got a lot of weapons.”

Hampton finished with 258 yards of total offense, hooking up with Casey on a pair of touchdown passes.

“He almost willed us to a win, and he’s done that all year,” Russell said. “Just like White Hall does it with (Walls), we do it with (Hampton). He just makes plays.”

While Walls was the player who missed the second half last week with a pulled hamstring, Richardson missed all but one play of the second half after pulling his hamstring in the second quarter. Richardson rushed for 60 yards on 13 carries in the first half.

With the win, White Hall hosts the No. 3 seed out of the 5A-West next week at Bulldog Stadium. That will either be Alma if Greenwood beats the Airedales tonight or Greenbrier if Alma prevails over the Bulldogs.

“It’s been since 2006 since we’ve hosted one,” Vaughn said. “It’s going to be fun not having to go somewhere else. We’ve got to get well. That’s the biggie.”

WHITE HALL 26, LITTLE ROCK MILLS 20, OT

Mills 6 8 0 6 0 — 20

White Hall 7 0 7 6 6 — 26

SCORING SUMMARY

FIRST QUARTER

WH — Richardson 1 run (Heinrich kick), 8:52.

MILLS — Brown 7 run (run failed), 1:32.

SECOND QUARTER

MILLS — Casey 18 pass from Hampton (Hampton run), 5:57.

THIRD QUARTER

WH — Walls 9 run (Heinrich kick), 5:42.

FOURTH QUARTER

MILLS — Casey 77 pass from Hampton (run failed), 6:07

WH — Walls 6 run (kick failed), :43.

OVERTIME

WH — Walls 16 run (kick failed).

STATISTICAL LEADERS

RUSHING: Mills, Hampton 11-58, Brown 6-21, Clark 4-17; White Hall, Walls 28-128, Richardson 13-60, Lee 10-42.

PASSING: Mills, Hampton 6-9-0-200; White Hall, Walls 3-6-0-35, Taylor 2-4-1-31, Lee 0-1-0-0.

RECEIVING: Mills, Casey 2-95, Dukes 1-57, Mayon 1-24; White Hall, Etheridge 3-34, Lee 1-19, Bethea 1-13.

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