Barbour County stuns Wicksburg in final seconds

Takwain Whigham seemed awfully calm for a guy that had just won the game for his team.

Maybe that’s the confidence that comes with knowing your team has a guaranteed place in the playoffs.

Whigham threw the game-tying touchdown and then kicked the clinching extra point with 8.2 seconds left, giving Barbour County a critical 22-21 road win over Wicksburg on Friday night.

It was an especially noteworthy ending considering Whigham neither started at quarterback nor played much of a factor offensively for the Jaguars (6-3, 5-2 2A Region 2) until deep into the second half.

He lined up all over the field, but had all of four touches at the end of the second quarter. But as they say, it’s how you finish, not how you start.

“It was just my turn to step up,” said Whigham, who stepped in for quarterback Emanuel Thompson for most of the second half. “They gave me the ball, and I stepped up. We knew this was going to be a fight. At the end, it was about who wanted it most.”

James Hamilton also showed how badly he wanted it. He was on the receiving end of the game-winning touchdown, which came as the Jags were facing fourth-and-6 at Wicksburg’s 13-yard line. Hamilton leaped over a defender at the goal line and tumbled into the end zone for the score. It was Hamilton’s 23-yard run on fourth-and-5 that kept the drive going seven plays earlier.

With the loss and Providence Christian’s win over Houston Academy, the Panthers (5-4, 4-3) are out of contention for the playoffs. It would have been Wicksburg’s first postseason appearance since 2007.

“The exact (playoff) scenario, I wasn’t sure about. All I know was we win, we’re in,” Wicksburg coach Donny Gillilan said. “We wanted to win this game. We didn’t want to back in. We wanted to win.”

The Panthers did everything to beat themselves in the first quarter. They committed three turnovers on their first three possessions, two of them within a three-minute span.

After Whigham’s interception of an Austin Sellers pass, Thompson took a quarterback keeper 10 yards to put Barbour County up 7-0.

Cody Smith fumbled the following kickoff, and Thompson turned that into more quick points with a three-yard run and a 13-0 lead.

Wicksburg capitalized on a Barbour County fumble late in the first half and made it a 13-7 game on Adam Fox’s one-yard touchdown run.

The Jags would have gotten those points back, but a false start penalty negated a 35-yard touchdown pass from Thompson to Whigham.

The Panthers recovered two onside kicks in the second half but turned the ball over on downs on their first possession and fumbled it away on their next.

Wicksburg took its first lead of the ball game after Chad Barrentine recovered a Barbour County fumble on the Jags’ first possession of the third quarter. Two plays later, Sellers’ six-yard pass to running back Tyler Dawkins gave the Panthers a 14-13 edge.

Dawkins had a 141-yard rushing night for Wicksburg. He collected 60 of those yards on one drive, including a 47-yard run, and ran in from one yard to put his team up 21-13 with 11:55 left in the game.

And then things began to turn.

The Jags cut the deficit to six with 6:29 left to play when a punt snap sailed over Lake Genard’s head. He kicked the ball out of the end zone for a safety.

That play completely changed momentum, but Gillilan said his team’s problems started long before that.

“A game with playoff contention is supposed to be like this,” Gillilan said. “This is what it’s all about. We just dug too big a hole early.”

The Panthers had one last chance with four seconds left on the clock. But Hamilton added a game-sealing interception to go along with a game-winning catch as his credentials for the game, snagging an Andrew Jones pass out of the air.

“We faltered, but we didn’t fail,” said Barbour County coach Juan Williams. “The defense broke a lot, but they came together in the end when we needed them. We found a way to win.”