FOOTBALL: Rugged physicality, robust resolve helps West Laurens come back to stun North Clayton

Off a blowout first win, West Laurens had yet to be tested going into its second game of the season. 

But that changed Friday as the Raiders endured their first “gut check” of the fall against an impressively high-powered North Clayton squad that came frighteningly close to handing them their first loss. 

A second-half rally from their two-score disadvantage at the break, and several determined defensive stands both early and late in the night, helped them pull out the nailbiter. 

West Laurens ultimately won the second half by three touchdowns, scoring two and denying two in a heart-racing fourth quarter to hang on for the 28-22 win. 

The Raiders had absolutely nothing – save for two red zone stops that prevented things from being worse than a 15-0 score at the half – go right in the first 24 minutes, but got things turned around in the second set with scores on four consecutive drives (of 70, 95, 65 and 95 yards in length, no less) out of intermission to put themselves on top for the first time all evening with a few minutes to go. 

Turnovers – the last a dramatic goal-line fumble – forced on either side of Branden Brooks’ go-ahead touchdown run sealed the game to keep West Laurens unbeaten heading into its region opener at Howard next week. 

“We made that way more exciting than it needed to be, but we survived,” Raiders’ head coach Kip Burdette said. 

West’s stars shined on both sides of the football, though the brightest performance was definitely by its defense, which faced a 74-against-40 play differential for a massive possession deficit, yet still managed to stand firm and make multiple key stops. 

Early in the game, the Raiders held twice in the red zone, halting North Clayton’s impressive opening drive to force a missed field goal, and then again on a jailbreak by Eagle quarterback Justin Murphy, who dodged two sure sacks, and a tackle upfield before being forced out by Jayce Blash a yard shy of converting a fourth-and-20. 

After answering a Clayton touchdown to tie the game at 22 midway through the fourth, the Raiders were once again marched to within scoring range. But J.D. Hogan sunk back to snag a Murphy pass near the end zone for his first career interception, and erase the threat. 

“Honestly, I just saw him going up the middle, and I was like, oh, there’s the ball, and I kind of just went after the ball, and went and got it,” he said. 

Again after Brooks broke loose, and into an 85-yard footrace with no tackler within a range of 10 yards as he reached the end zone to give West Laurens its final lead, Murphy and the Eagles raced back up the field to knock at the door from inside the West 5 with less than a minute to go. 

West Laurens stacked up a run inside to force North Clayton to scramble, and the Eagles, for a moment, had 12 men in formation as they set up, and ran the extra guy off just before snapping it on a fateful second-and-goal.  

Murphy searched for, and found, a lane to the right of tackle, but lost the football somewhere between a hit by Shannon Adkins and a second effort to extend for the goal line. 

The senior linebacker, who was seen sporting the team’s turnover chain carrying a shark pendant during postgame celebrations, collected it at the 1 to allow the Raiders to run out the remaining time with a Cason Pollock kneel-down. 

“That just put a lot of confidence in us, and what we can do in the long run in our senior year,” Adkins said of the win, which hinged on his team’s 180-degree turnaround at halftime. 

And it was indeed a completely different-looking squad that emerged from the locker room, and bounced back from the night’s dispiriting start. 

“We were making a lot of mistakes,” Brooks said. “We just had to come out and fix a lot of things.” 

A main objective: Getting back to basics and being more physical running the football, against a North Clayton defense that had played tough, but that West Laurens coaches and players believed they could eventually wear down. 

The Raiders “answered the bell.” 

“(We challenged them to) take the weight room to the field. We want to bully people, and we did in the second half,” Burdette said. “I’m really proud of how we responded up front.”

West Laurens wrapped the night with 382 yards total. Cummings, with 222, and Brooks, with 106, each had touchdowns – Cummings’ to tie it up at 15 after two third-quarter drives, and Brooks’ the last to go on top for the first time with just under five minutes left. 

But the catalyst was Adkins, who got his first carry of the season near the end of a much-needed scoring march out of the half, and instantly delivered a series of runs embodying that smashmouth demeanor. 

He rammed in the Raiders’ first touchdown of the night from short yardage, then the two-point conversion run that officially evened the score after Cummings singlehandedly carried it 95 yards on three plays (the finale featuring a cutback and broken tackle from 65) for the second. 

Adkins’ second from five yards capped off another game-tying drive after North Clayton responded to re-take the lead early in the fourth.

While West Laurens had the Eagles, with a roster of roughly 30, thoroughly outmanned, the visitors’ 11 each way was pretty dern skippy, and outgained the Raiders by an unofficial 202 in the first half. 

Murphy, their third-year starter at quarterback, was a revelation. 

A year ago, the stage was a bit too big for the sophomore track star as the West Laurens defense took him off his game in a 42-8 victory. 

But Friday, the vastly-improved pocket passer and equally-dangerous sprinter, lived up to the nickname “Mini Lamar Jackson” with his escapability and –  in the biggest improvement from last year – an 18-of-33 completion rate for 314 yards. 

“He’s different,” Hogan said. “He’s one of them ones that he’s built different than other people.” 

North Clayton also rushed for 208 on 41 carries, with Murphy scoring its go-ahead touchdown to break a tie of 15s in the fourth. 

Adkins, who led the D with 15 total tackles, 11 of them solo and one for loss, had some of the most success tracking and getting him to the ground. 

“He runs a 10.5 in the 100,” he said. “Our coaches told us, aim small, miss small. So I was just picking a part on his body and making tackles.” 

Between his throwing, sprinting and improv skills, the junior made consecutive stops on third and fourth downs a rarity for the Raider defense. 

Ethan Cason-Guyton, who along with Maxx Chafin was stiffed out of at least a couple more by Murphy’s heroics in the pocket, had the only official sack of the night on a third down to help force a punt in the second quarter.

In the first half, he scrambled to extend a play for the opening touchdown on a 24-yard pass to Dre’Von Glass, and hit Triston Maggitt on the bullseye with a laser for another near halftime. 

West Laurens, meanwhile, went next to nowhere on five drives that ended in four punts, and a fumble that set up the second touchdown of the above. 

The Raider D performed admirably despite the workload… and scraped out a bonus possession with only 10 seconds to play as Nicholas Hester took advantage of some miscommunication and picked off a Murphy throw around midfield. But West Laurens couldn’t complete a final shot. 

Adjustments were made, and fires were lit under seats, during halftime. 

But most of what motivated the comeback, Burdette said, was a step up by the players themselves to prove their mettle. 

“Both sides of the ball improved when we came out after halftime, and that’s a testament to the kids,” he said. “We needed that, probably, the gut check to see where we were. So it’s good that we got that early, and had to fight back from adversity, because I don’t know if we would’ve been able to come out of that hole last year.” 

Among others who stood up with something to say during the few key minutes in the locker room, it was Cummings who underscored the same message about leaning on the Eagles physically to tire them out, and being able to “fight through adversity,” that proved prophetic about the final half. 

Those words, and the team’s second-half response overall, said plenty about its sense of resolve that will likely be put to the test again in some bigger games to come this year.  

“We’ve been here before,” Cummings said. “So I just knew what it was and I knew what it was going to take to win, and I told my teammates that. We’ve got two more quarters left, and all games end in the fourth quarter… We came out and got the job done.”