GOOD HOPE —
The Hamilton football team is a tough squad that doesn’t need any extra help to win, but Good Hope proved to be a generous host Friday night. The Aggies used explosive plays on offense, defense and special teams to rout the Raiders 48-14.
Hamilton junior running back Garrett May rushed for 97 yards and three touchdowns, and scored another on an 84-yard interception return — one of two defensive touchdowns for the Aggies. Junior defensive back Charles Metcalf took the second-half kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown as Hamilton stretched its lead to 34-6 just 15 seconds into the third quarter.
The Aggies produced 12 offensive plays of at least 15 yards — six rushing and six passing. Good Hope only surrendered 305 yards total offense to Hamilton, but 228 of them came on those 12 plays.
The Raiders were without quarterback Sebastian Fendley, who was suspended from the team indefinitely following an in-school incident this past week.
Moss said the situation is no different than losing a key player to an injury and shared that message with his players leading up to the game.
“We’ve got to find a way to win. Everybody has to step up,” Moss said. “We talked about it for the last few days when we knew we weren’t going to have him. We’ve got to rally around this one guy, make sure everyone is behind him, everybody is on the same page. Obviously I didn’t do a good job of getting us in that mindset, but we’ve got to do better.”
The “one guy” was junior Austin Crumbley. In his first start under center, Crumbley had his ups and downs, completing seven passes for 97 yards along with three interceptions.
The Raiders avoided disaster after fumbling then recovering the opening kickoff. But three plays later, Hamilton defensive lineman John Langley intercepted a screen pass and returned it 15 yards for a touchdown.
“He was a little shaky at first,” Moss said of Crumbley. “This is a tough game to break in a quarterback because Hamilton has a great football team. Obviously we’ve got to get to the point where we can see if he can get a little confidence in himself.”
Sophomore running back Jerrod McClure did his part to help Crumbley and the rest of the Raiders, rushing 22 times for 104 yards and catching four passes for 68 yards. His 45-yard touchdown run with 3:24 left in the first quarter cut Hamilton’s lead to 14-6.
From there, the Aggies took over, scoring five unanswered touchdowns. A 7-yard run by May with 2:38 left in the second quarter made it 21-6 Hamilton. A 15-yard pass from Mitch Stults to Justin Scott eight seconds before halftime, along with Kevin Chavez’s extra-point kick, made it 28-6.
“We’ve got to work on what we can do offensively and defensively,” Moss said. “We’ve got to shore some things up. Certainly we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
Stults completed 12 of 15 passes for 144 yards and ran the ball nine times for 34 yards. His rushing total would have been higher, but he was sacked twice by Good Hope senior linebacker Ethan Cofer.
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