MOORE — 4th-and-1 play leads to loss to No. 1 Union
It came down to one play for Westmoore. A chance to upset No. 1 Tulsa Union on its on field and the visiting Jaguars needed to make one play to keep its opportunity alive.
Trailing by three points in the final minutes, the Jags marched all the way to the Union 25-yard line. On fourth down they needed just one yard to keep the driving moving toward a game-winning touchdown. But when Josh Morgan took the hand-off into the middle of the Redskins defense, he was stuffed behind the line of scrimmage.
“After that big run I had, I knew they were watching for me,” Morgan said. “When I came in they had 10 guys in the box. I did my best to get it, but it didn’t work out the way we wanted.”
Perennial power Union scraped by Westmoore 17-14 in the first round of the Class 6A playoffs Friday night, but not without a fight from the Jaguars.
“We just didn’t make enough plays,” Westmoore coach Billy Langford said. “Union made enough plays to win. You get stopped on fourth-and-one. with about four minutes left in the game on about the 25. We had our opportunities, but couldn’t quite come through on all of them.”
Trailing 10-0 at the half, Westmoore’s Jhames West put the Jags on the scoreboard with a one-yard run in the third quarter. Union answered in the third, but were shut down the rest of the way. West added a 12-yard run, followed by an Austin Dodd’s second PAT in the fourth to close the gap 17-14.
“It was very tough,” West said. “We felt l like we did everything in our hands to do what we needed to do to win the game. Just didn’t happen for us. But the effort was there.”
Westmoore got the exact type of game it wanted. Low scoring, hard hitting and physical. They also did the one thing it hadn’t been able to do in previous games against elite competition. It had zero turnovers.
“When you play Jenks and Union and those guys, you want to keep their offensive units off the field as much as possible,” Langford said. “We were fortunate this year to have the offensive line, runningbacks and quarterback to be able to do that and to control the clock and control the tempo. You get in a game like that it comes down to one or two possessions. It came down to one possession and one play and we just couldn’t get a yard.”
With the loss, Westmoore ended its season at 6-5. But the players were proud of how they represented themselves against the East side.
“We lost, but it was probably the best game we ever played,” Morgan said. “We had a lot of trouble the past few games coming together as a team. We lost, but that is probably the best game seen by any team on this side of the state.”
Michael Kinney Follow me @eyeamtruth mkinney@mooreamerican.com
