Lions get by athletic Pleasant Grove to win ninth straight game

PLEASANT GROVE — Briarwood Christian School’s football team has won nine straight games, which has fans remembering another Lions team that ran the table in 1998, winning the Class 3A state championship.

But if you ask coach Fred Yancey if he sees any similarities to that title team, he’ll give a direct, succinct answer: “No.”

Yancey’s Lions extended their winning streak Friday with a 21-14 win at Pleasant Grove, closing out their Class 5A, Region 5 campaign unblemished. But after starting out with two touchdowns in the first seven minutes and looking like the top team in 5A — as the Alabama Sports Writers Association unanimously placed them in last week’s poll — they sputtered late in the first half and all throughout the second, and very nearly let the Spartans come back at the very end.

Indeed, it was a very strange ending that gave Pleasant Grove not one, but two chances in the last 12 seconds to tie or win the game. On the first chance from the Lions 32-yard line, quarterback Zyquez Perryman went long and was intercepted by defensive back Carson Donnelly, but the officials ruled that the play was dead because of an inadvertent whistle after Perryman dropped the ball and picked it back up. The Spartans retained possession, even though they were pushed back 10 yards for a holding penalty.

The second play went much like the first, though, with JR Tran-Reno picking off another Perryman Hail Mary attempt.

The end was very different than the beginning for Briarwood, which took the lead with 7:22 left in the first quarter as Andrew Sherrod got a hand on a Pleasant Grove punt deep in Spartans territory, then picked up the ball and ran 11 yards for a touchdown. It was Sherrod’s second non-offensive TD of the season.

On Briarwood's next possession, running back Tran-Reno did all the work in two straight plays: an 18-yard run, then a 46-yard scoring scramble that made Lions fans think the junior was about to have a really big night.

In the second quarter, quarterback Michael Hiers connected with receiver Hudson Hartsfield, who evaded two Spartans tacklers as he ran a 29-yard obstacle course to the goal line with 4:14 left before intermission.

But after that, the Briarwood offense seemed to take the rest of the night off, and Pleasant Grove’s woke up.

Spartans coach Jim Elgin pulled starting quarterback Dishon Smith in favor of Perryman, and on their final drive of the first half, the freshman guided the home team 80 yards down the field in 11 plays, capped by a 1-yard run up the middle by Xavier Hill for their first touchdown of the game with 24 seconds left in the half.

Perryman struck again as Pleasant Grove took first possession after the break, with another drive almost as long but much quicker. He threw a 43-yard pass to Caleb Jackson, then two plays later somehow found Hill in heavy traffic just inside the goal line on a 36-yard play. And with just two minutes elapsed in the second half, the Briarwood lead was cut to seven points.

But for the rest of the game, neither offense could muster any progress at all, and couldn’t get past each other’s 40-yard line until the Spartans’ last possession of the game.

Taking a Lions punt on their own 24 and then moving back five more yards on a penalty, Perryman mounted an air attack, or at least tried to. A quick 23-yard pass got the ball near midfield, but then he was sacked on two straight plays by Briarwood defensive lineman Patrick Blythe. A pass interference penalty on second down and long wiped out those sacks, but JaMayron Furlow kept the hosts’ hopes alive with a 17-yard catch for first down, setting Pleasant Grove up on the Lions 32 with 22 seconds left.

That’s when the craziness of the last two plays came, and Briarwood escaped with the win. And Yancey could relax a bit, even though he still wasn’t really happy with the officials or his own team.

“Give Pleasant Grove credit for out-playing us most of the game,” Yancey said. “He [Perryman] gave them a lot of life, and a reason to keep playing hard.”

In addition to the punt block and return for a touchdown, Sherrod also intercepted a Spartans pass.

“Andrew is a game in, game out player,” Yancey said. “I can always count on Andrew to not only give us great effort, but great plays. … He’s an opportunist. He looks for ways to make big plays, and tonight he came up with them.”

But overall, Yancey is still looking for the type of game that he thinks his team should play.

“I’m not seeing what I want to see out of our team at this point. We haven’t played a good game in weeks and weeks, and we’ve got improve if we’re ever going to be as good as we wish we were,” he said.

Tran-Reno finished with 126 yards on 22 carries. Hiers was 11-of-17 with one interception for 108 yards. Carson Eddy caught six passes for 41 yards.

Briarwood (9-0, 7-0 region) finishes the regular season next week as it hosts Madison Academy. Pleasant Grove drops to 5-4 overall and 4-3 in Region 5.