Princeton – Princeton’s special teams were more spectacular than special Friday night.
Hosting Class AAAA No. 8 Oak Hill, the the Class AAA No. 2 Tigers returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, blocked a PAT, blocked a punt and recovered a muffed kick en route to a 56-20 victory over the Red Devils Friday evening at Hunnicutt Stadium in Princeton.
The unit highlighted a night where the offense and defense carried their weight with all-state quarterback Chance Barker tossing three touchdown, bringing his career total to 92, surpassing the mark of 90 set by his predecessor Grant Cochran.
“Grant helped me through it all,” Barker said. “He’s a great quarterback and he taught me a lot my ninth grade year. He taught me the offense of (former offensive coordinator Chris) Belcher and he helped me a lot. Anthony Boone of Quarterback Country helped me a lot and without them I couldn’t do this and I just want to give all my glory to God as well. I’m super blessed.”
Barker finished the historic night 11-of-19 passing for 185 yards with touchdown passes to Wyatt Cline, JoJo Campbell and Brad Mossor, overcoming an ankle injury suffered last week that kept him out of practice.
“Without my dad and my mom, I wouldn’t have been able to play tonight,” Barker said. “We did some heat and ice to get it better. But without those two I couldn’t have played tonight. Coach Tanner, he told me to just take it light Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday at Practice.”
The Tigers put the pressure on the Red Devils early and often, generating explosive plays at will.
The first came when Mossor ran the opening kick back 96 yards while the defense held the Red Devils to a turnover on downs on their opening drive.
“No,” Oak Hill head coach Davon Marion said when asked if he intentionally kicked to Mossor, a Walker Award finalist a year ago. “I told the kicker kick to anybody but No. 1, and he kicked it right to him. Steals momentum. That’s a good football team. Them guys are going to play late November into December. They did everything we game-planned for but sometimes athletes show up and make plays and that’s what they did.”
When the Tiger offense finally took the field, Barker and Co. needed just two plays to strike as he found Campbell streaking down the left sideline for a 43-yard touchdown pass and 14-0 lead just three minutes into the game.
Oak Hill answered on the ensuing drive when a fourth-and-7 gamble from the Princeton 16 turned into a touchdown pass from Luke Endicott to Carson Treadway but it was all Tigers the rest of the way.
A punt block on Oak Hill’s following drive was recovered by Kalum Kiser at the Oak Hill 2 and punched in the following play by Mossor.
Meanwhile the Red Devil offense was stuck in neutral, limited to just 3-of-16 passing for 20 yards in the first half with the Tigers notching three sacks and two interceptions.
“The way we see it, pressure bursts pipes or it makes diamonds,” Princeton head coach Nate Tanner said. “To win consistently versus what our kids have been executing is tough. It’s tough on anybody. The guys that we have covering, we’ve been putting in a lot of work since June. We have a plethora of them. I was just talking to the radio guys and in practice, when we practice, the guys that are playing defense, they play a lot of football and vise versa.
“When we play offense they’re playing against Isaias (Selen), Corbin (Justus) and Logan Whittaker which those three would probably start on a lot of offenses. And they play on offense some too. They get really good live reps and Chance is the scout team quarterback so sometimes you’re going against the best kids in our area and probably the state so those (defensive backs), on Friday night they put it to work.
Mossor twisted the knife with his third touchdown of the half, taking a touch pass from Barker 36 yards for a score on the first play of the second quarter, extending the lead to 28-6.
Following an interception by Mossor on Oak Hill’s next drive, the Red Devil defense got off the field by forcing a fourth-down incompletion and parlayed that momentum into a 43-yard Cade Compton rushing touchdown, converting on the two-point try to make it a 28-14 game. But Mossor’s fourth touchdown of the half – a 2-yard plunge – made it a three-score game again at the break.
One more special teams error – a muffed kickoff to open the second half – nailed the coffin as the Tigers recovered the loose ball at Oak Hill’s 21. Mossor ran his touchdown total to five racing in from nine yards out five plays later.
“With Brad, he’s like a queen where you can move him all over the board,” Tanner said. “Last week being the first week they bracketed him like that, it made me dig in the bag a little bit and think what are some other ways we can move him pre-snap, align him pre-snap to force their hand defensively? See how they’re going to align and move. We used some new motions, did some stack stuff. There in the second half I think Chance threw one pass.
“I got in some sets where we stacked three receivers and they pulled all four guys in the secondary over there. Then you’ve got your numbers in the box. When the other kids are producing and it allows us to go fast it allows us to get Brad easier touches. Just mixing it up. Motion, jet, screens, intermediate balls. It’s hard to get him shot plays because we have a safety playing 12 yards off and a guy in his face. They pretty much take that away.”
On a night full of positives for the Tigers, there was a negative.
All-stater and Huff Award candidate Kalum Kiser hurt his leg on the punt block recovery. He attempted to come back in after walking off under his own power but later left the game and was admitted to the hospital.
“He’s at the hospital right now,” Tanner said after the game. “It looked like the kid that tackled him kind of hip-dropped him a little bit and he just got bent up there. He said his knee made a pop. Kalum’s a warrior. He tried to go back in and he played a series or two and I think his knee swelled up and tightened up on him so we’re just going to pray for the best and try to get him healthy and hopefully we get some good news.”
Compton led the Red Devils with 91 yards on the ground while Endicott scrambled for 50.
Mossor finished with 99 yards from scrimmage in addition to his 96-yard return.
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