WALES – Pinned at their own 13-yard-line with 3:20 to play and trailing by one point, the Oak Hill Raiders had to come up with something – anything – to try and break free from a tight Morse defense that kept their running game bottled up early.
The answer turned out to be a familiar formation – the shotgun.
“Coach wanted to save it,” said Oak Hill quarterback Josh Jillson. “He told us if we were down near the end of the game, we’d use it. We practiced it all week.”
The practice paid off.
After two incomplete passes from the 13, Jillson dropped back a third time, but the Shipbuilders had his receivers covered. No matter. Jillson scampered around the right end for a 19-yard gain to keep the drive alive.
On the next play, Jillson found fullback Eric Daniels, who was lined up at tight end, for a 68-yard bomb up the seam for the winning touchdown to lead Oak Hill (2-2) to a 20-14 win over the Shipbuilders (0-4).
“We saw everybody slide over to the left a bit before the snap,” said Daniels. “We saw the safety slide over to the double wings, and that’s what we look for on that play.”
“I saw the safety off to the left about 30 feet too far,” added Jillson. “We ran the other routes to pull the safety out of the way. It was really exciting because we haven’t scored at all in the last two games.”
Morse got the ball back with 2:45 left on the clock, but the Raiders’ defense held the line on four consecutive downs. Jillson knelt the ball on the next three plays to run out the clock.
“We’ve been working hard to get everyone working together all at once for the whole game,” said first-year Morse coach Jason Libby. “Last week we got a good first half, and today we got a good 46 minutes or so, but it still wasn’t the whole game.”
Defensively, the Shipbuilders held tough through the first half, led in large part by sophomore tackle Mike Giroux, who was in on 15 tackles. Morse even scored the game’s first touchdown on a 5-yard out pass from Jamie Dunning to Wil Giles with 8:45 to play in the first half.
Oak Hill fired back with a touchdown on a 23-yard pass from Jillson to Casey Behne with 1:18 to go, and kicked the extra point to take a 7-6 lead into halftime.
The Raiders marched 53 yards on its first possession of the second half, which included a Wally Rines 23-yard touchdown run, but Morse wasn’t ready to give up. After Oak Hill missed on a 2-point conversion, the teams traded fruitless drives until the beginning of the final quarter. Morse, largely on the back of sophomore Darrus Grate (26 carries, 118 yards), drove efficiently from its own 20-yard-line for a touchdown, and T.J. Vigue pounded home the two-point conversion to give Morse the lead, 14-13. Oak Hill didn’t get another first down until the Jillson’s third-down scramble.
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