‘Hot sauce’: No. 3 Blazers advance to final four with 40-point win

Published 2:54 am Sunday, December 2, 2018

VALDOSTA –– For the second straight week, No. 3 Valdosta State rang up 60-plus points in a playoff game.

The latest victim was Lenoir-Rhyne as the Blazers (12-0) defeated the Bears 61-21 on Saturday afternoon to advance to the Final Four.

Valdosta State coach Kerwin Bell’s first words to his team after the game were flavorful.

“That’s some hot sauce right there!” Bell yelled, smiling ear-to-ear.

And with good reason. The Blazers finished with 597 yards of total offense, including an eye-popping 382 yards rushing –– 13 shy of the single-game record.

For the second straight week, the Blazers’ unheralded defensive unit held an opponent to half its scoring average. The Bears came into Saturday averaging the eighth-best scoring output in the country at 42.5 points per game.

Heading into Saturday, the Blazers needed just 30 points to set the Gulf South Conference single-season scoring record. They had that by halftime as quarterback Rogan Wells scored on a 24-yard touchdown run to put the Blazers ahead 34-7 with 1:26 to go before halftime.

“Reading about (the record) the other day, I knew that we needed 30 more points,” Wells said. “During the game I wasn’t really focused on that. … It’s just a great accomplishment for this team and it shows what our offense is capable of doing.”

The Blazers kept a torrid pace against the Bears, running 77 plays to the Bears’ 60 and picking up 29 first-downs on the day.

Bell said Saturday’s game would be the biggest challenge his team would face all season. The Blazers have now won 12 straight games, continuing a streak of 44 or more points in each.

“We’re excited to be moving on to the next round,” Bell said. “I challenged our football team to play as a football team today and make a statement, and our guys accepted that challenge. We got prepared, I thought, as well as we have all year. In practice all week, we were really focused and I think you can see that as we came out.

“I thought it was one of our most complete games of the year. … I’ve got to give (Lenoir-Rhyne) coach (Drew) Cronic and them a lot of credit. They’ve got a good football team, they’re well-coached and they play hard and we knew we had to meet that ability to play hard to be successful.”

The Blazers’ defense held the Bears’ offense to 319 yards of total offense and picked off quarterback Grayson Willingham three times in the first half. Cory Roberts and Stephen Denmark had the first two before junior defensive back Ravarius Rivers contorted to snag a one-handed interception of Willingham with 3:30 left in the second half.

Against the wing-T offensive scheme of the Bears, the Blazers found ways to neutralize the Bears’ run game and forced Willingham to throw the ball downfield. Willingham finished just 7-of-19 passing for 147 yards and two touchdowns while leading rusher Ameen Stevens was limited to 10 carries for 56 yards and no touchdowns.

“Give coach (Danny) Verpaele and those guys, coach (Kenny) McClendon, coach Rowe and all our young coaches credit. They’re doing a great job of giving them looks throughout the week,” Bell said. 

“The one thing that we did that a lot of teams hadn’t been able to do against them is we loaded the box –– played with seven and eight-man fronts against them. We’ve got some lockdown corners and those guys did a great job when they tried to throw it over the top. We shut the run down and then our man-to-man coverage skills were really good today.”

Harlon Hill Trophy finalist Rogan Wells completed 19-of-27 passes for 209 yards and two touchdowns. Quahlin Patterson led the Blazers with 96 yards rushing on only nine carries, including a 1-yard punch to cap a 14-play, 82-yard drive to put the Blazers ahead 61-14 with 3:06 remaining.

Stewart Spence, Brian Saunds and Travis Taylor each caught touchdown passes in the game with Spence catching a 5-yard pass from reserve Adam Robles to put the Blazers ahead 54-14 with 14:09 left in the game.

VSU kicker Andrew Gray went 2-for-2 on field goals and 7-of-8 on PATs to give him 13 points on the day to set a new team single-season scoring record with 133 points.

On defense, Nick Moss and Raymond Palmer led the Blazers with seven tackles each.

Lenoir-Rhyne finishes its season 12-2, its lone losses coming to GSC teams West Alabama and VSU.

For the Blazers, their historic season continues. Sitting one win away from punching their ticket to McKinney, Texas for the national championship, Bell says it’s important to keep dreaming.

“I’m sure we all dream,” Bell said. “We told them to dream about it in the summer, putting a championship ring on their finger. I think before you accomplish things, you’ve got to be able to dream about it.”

UP NEXT

Valdosta State: Will host Notre Dame (Ohio) next Saturday at noon E.T.