A poor start, bad weather, and ill-timed turnovers left Habersham Central searching for its footing against Cherokee Bluff Friday night in what would ultimately be a lightning-shortened, 35-14 loss for the Raiders on the road.
“It was hard to watch. The start was atrocious,” Habersham Central Head Coach Benji Harrison said.
Atrocious is as apt a description as there could be for the first minute and 19 seconds for the Raiders.
Habersham Central (2-2) got the ball to start the game and, in just 1 minute, 5 seconds, the Raiders were forced to punt deep in their own territory.
A bad snap gave the Bears (3-1) plenty of time to get through protection and block the punt, which the home team recovered and took into the end zone for a touchdown.
The ensuing kickoff was returned for a decent gain for the Raiders before being fumbled and turned over to Cherokee Bluff on the Habersham Central 39-yard line.
On the first offensive play of the game for the Bears, quarterback Cooper Dean found Jackson Pirkle on a seam route out of the backfield for a 39-yard touchdown pass.
With that, the Raiders found themselves in a 14-point hole within the first minute and 19 seconds of the game.
“You can’t start a game like we did and jump down 14-to-nothing to a good football team and that’s what we did,” Harrison said. “I thought we had a good week of preparation, but, obviously, the focus wasn’t there the way it needed to be.”
Both teams settled in from that point and played the remainder to the tune of a 21-14 ballgame.
It would take another 7 minutes, 28 seconds of game time before either team would score as Dean connected on a quick strike to Dylan Haley for a 4-yard touchdown. The score would mark 21-unanswered points for the home team.
Habersham Central notched its first points with a 22-yard pass from Paris Wilbanks to receiver Jay Feltus over the middle that allowed Feltus to slip the safety to get across the goal line. A successful point-after-touchdown try from kicker Camden Meads cut the deficit to 21-7.
The Bears stretched their lead back to 21 points on a quarterback keeper from Dean on the 1-yard line with 7:34 left on the clock in the second quarter.
About five minutes after the horn blew signaling halftime, weather started moving into the area and the lightning detection system siren went off. An announcement was made for spectators to head to their cars and clear the stadium. Conversations between Geep Cunningham and Ralph Neely, the two schools’ athletic directors, to determine whether it was worth waiting out the weather began.
For every lightning strike within 10 miles of the stadium, the 30-minute timer was reset as to when the two teams could come out of their respective locker rooms to restart the contest.
Ultimately, it was an hour, 40 minutes before the second half kicked off.
Harrison said his initial message in the halftime break was a challenge to his players to respond.
Then, as the delay drug on, it gave coaches and players alike the opportunity to watch film from the first half. The biggest thing that drew the ire of coaches was the defensive performance.
After the solid defense that propped up the offense a week ago at White County, the Raiders were missing tackles and not wrapping up on them, and the passing game of Cherokee Bluff picked them apart.
“We had a lot of time to talk during that rain delay and we are so inconsistent right now. Some weeks we look really good, but right now it’s a rollercoaster with us and there has to be consistency because we’re a good football team,” Harrison said. “It’s so frustrating. We have to play consistent defense.
“You know, you don’t have to be perfect – playing defense is not a game of perfect,” he continued. “Playing good defense is doing your job with extremely high effort.”
In the second half, the misfortunes continued for the Raiders.
On the kickoff out of the break, Cherokee Bluff mishandled the ball and gave Habersham Central the opportunity to recover with great field position. But the ball was dived on by a Bears player just in time.
At that point, a quick strike coming out of the locker room by pouncing on a turnover on the kickoff would have been an instant swing in momentum and pulled the score back to a two-possession contest.
The Raiders were able to force a punt on that possession. Then, on the first play from scrimmage in the second half, a long run to flip field position and line up a potential touchdown resulted in a fumble and turnover at the Bears’ 13-yard line.
Exactly three minutes later, with 5:20 left in the third period, running back Donnie Warren redeemed his fumble on the previous possession and scored a 12-yard scamper around the right side. Meads was good for the extra point try again.
On the kickoff following the score, the Bears once again mishandled the ball and gave the Raiders another chance to have the ball in great field position. But a Cherokee Bluff player was once again able to fall on top of the ball just in time.
“We had two opportunities there on kicks to get the ball and we didn’t,” Harrison said. “I mean, we could have tied that game up in the first four minutes of the half like they jumped on us 14 at the beginning of the game and we didn’t. When you’re clawing and scratching to get back in the game, you’ve got to do those things, make those plays and we didn’t. It was just frustrating.”
Cherokee Bluff was able to milk the clock and pushed across another score with a 22-yard run from Pirkle to add to the lead with less than a minute left in the third quarter.
That touchdown by Pirkle would mark the final score of the game as the lighting detector system would sound its siren once again with 7 minutes, 50 seconds left in the fourth quarter. With the delay at the half, the game was called just before 11 p.m. after a meeting between both coaches and athletic directors at midfield.
The Raiders dropped to 2-2 with the loss, but all those contests were against non-region opponents. Next week, that changes as Loganville comes to town and the march toward the playoffs truly begins.
But, as those all-important games approach, the kinks will need to be worked out and some semblance of consistency found.
“I told them after the game, I said, ‘When we play like we’re capable of, we can beat anybody on our schedule. But when we play very average, then everybody on our schedule can beat us,’” Harrison said. “We’ve got to become a consistent team. Now we’re into region play next week and we’ve just got to really, truly look at each game and totally focus on that game.
“Our goal now is to be 1-0 after Loganville, but it’s also bigger than that,” he continued. “It’s also correcting the mistakes we made tonight so they won’t happen again because when you make the mistakes that we made tonight, you’re not going to beat too many people.”
The onus of cleaning up those mistakes and figuring out consistency will fall on both coaches and players over the next week and heading into the bye week the following week.
“At the end of the day, how we perform is our job (as coaches) and it’s our job to make sure they perform at the highest level possible,” Harrison said. “It’s like I said, I’m never going to throw all the blame toward kids without taking my fair share of it. I think they know that about me. We have that relationship where they’ll own it too.
“It’s our job as a group – player and coach – to fix the issues before we start region play and have the kind of season we can still very much have,” he continued. “It is laying right in front of us if we go out and do what we’re supposed to do.”
The Raiders and Loganville will kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Mt. Airy on Friday in the first region matchup of the season for either side.
