CARROLLTON - It couldn’t have gotten out to a worse start for the Carrollton Hawks in each of the opening acts in both halves.
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Through grit, skill, and determination they fought back gallantly, but ultimately it wasn’t enough as they fell to the No. 6 Class 1A-ranked Camp Point Central Panthers 40-32 at Carrollton High School on Friday night.
The loss drops the Hawks to 6-3, which concluded the regular season and will wait to see who they’ll play tonight in the Class 1A playoffs.
“We’re super disappointed with the loss, but man we did some good things out here,” Carrollton head coach Nick Flowers said. “I think as the game went on I thought passing wise we got smoother, and we started picking up on some concepts that what we could do against what they were doing to us defensively.”
Quarterback Hunter Flowers was 23-for-32 with 271 yards, including two touchdowns and two interceptions. On the ground, he rushed for 69 yards and one touchdown. Nathan Walker caught a season-high nine passes and 141 yards.
The Panthers finish the regular season in good form with an 8-1 record and are expected to pick up the No. 2 seed in the Class 1A south bracket. They earned some revenge on the Hawks from last season, who beat them 22-20 in the second of the playoffs in Carrollton.
“We executed and hit some big plays,” Central head coach Brad Dixon said. “We got some stops, but we knew [Carrollton] were going to keep coming back. These guys play extremely hard every time we play them they just don’t ever give up, and our guys didn’t either. We made stops when we had to.”
As a team, the Panthers rushed for 203 yards. However, they made big plays through the air. Quarterback, Eric Jones connected on 5-of-11 passes for 151 yards and four touchdowns.
“We like to run the football, but when teams are going to stack the box, we got a guy a that can throw and got guys that can catch. It puts you in a bind,” Dixon said. “If we run the football like we think we’re capable of, you’ve got to try to put enough guys in there, but then you got to be ready when we’re in our play-action stuff. It’s hard to do both.”
After stopping the Hawks on the first drive of the game, Cole Williams scored on the third play of Central first series on a 62-yard run. The 2017 all-state running back wasn’t finished by any means, let alone in the first quarter.
Forty seconds later, he caught a 17-yard pass from Jones and just like that it was 12-0 Panthers with 6:50 left in the first quarter. Just over two minutes later, on a 3rd and goal at the 20, Williams caught a screen pass that had the Hawks defense fooled and off he went to the house to put Central up 18-0.
The Panthers scored so fast because they recovered two consecutive kickoffs. One was an expertly placed onside kick and the second was a squib kick.
“We scored early again like we did last year here,” Dixon said. “The first [onside kick] was called based on the alignment. The second one was just we like to kick squib kicks, and it worked out. We didn’t call an onside per say, but we don’t usually like to kick it deep to anybody. It’s just dumb to give [Walker] or any of those guys an opportunity to return a kick.”
Carrollton finally got the ball back with 4:21 to play in the first quarter and their offense came to life. After completing a 13-yard pass to Zach Flowers, Hunter Flowers capped the drive with a 1-yard rushing touchdown to get the back the Hawks in the game.
Carrollton got a stop but threw an interception and a couple of plays later the defense forced a fumble and recovered the ball. That led to a Walker 2-yard touchdown catch that got the Hawks within a touchdown at 18-12, which would be the score at halftime.
The Hawks kicked off to the Panthers, and it was almost a repeat of the first quarter.
On the first play of the first drive of the second half, Chayse Houston caught a swing pass, read his blocks correctly, and sprinted 69 yards for a touchdown to put his team up 26-12. The Panther’s cushion got 40 seconds later when Flowers threw an to Brandon Rossmiller who raced to the end zone for a touchdown that gave Central a 34-12 lead and just like that the Hawks were in a deep hole.
“We didn’t have an answer early on for a few of their basic run plays,” Flowers said. “They’re so big up front and so scatty in the backfield. The [running backs] get behind those big boys, and they dart out. They got a good combination of size and speed in the backfield.”
“We loaded the box and kudos to Coach Dixon for throwing the ball. They were releasing more guys we couldn’t cover, and Jones is able to get the ball to those receivers this year.”
Carrollton dusted themselves off and put together another nice drive that was capped by a Garrett Settles 3-yard touchdown run. However, less than two minutes later, Houston gave the Hawks a problem again as he caught a 35-yard touchdown pass over the top to put Central up 40-18.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, Ethan Brannan scored his second touchdown of the season on a 12-yard reverse handoff that gave the Hawks some late momentum. This was Brannan’s first full game back after spending the vast majority of the last two games on the bench. Before that he’d been out all season nursing a leg injury he suffered in practice a week before the season started. He caught five passes for 63 yards and rushed for 20 yards with a touchdown.
“He showed what he’s capable of doing for sure,” Flowers said. “This was our plan to ease him back into full contact. When you start playing this caliber of football you don’t want to set a kid up for failure. He was definitely successful tonight.”
The Hawks made things exciting with 2:59 to play as Settles caught a 3-yard pass in the end zone that gave Carrollton a shot at improbably tying the game. However, they wouldn’t get the ball back, and Central ran out the clock to end the game.
“[We] had opportunities,” Flowers said. “Special team wise things did not go our way tonight, and we spent a ton of time on it. I think that was the difference maker in the game was early on a few of their run plays and then special teams.”
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