Dollarway was hit with some bad breaks at home Friday night, but escaping another one in the fourth quarter helped the Cardinals gain some much-needed momentum against Crossett.
Quarterback Xavier Long was ruled down just before Dollarway’s sixth fumble of the night on third down and 1. Two plays later sophomore running back Keyshawn Williams reversed his field and broke a 26-yard touchdown run to extend Dollarway’s lead to 24-13, and the Cardinals marched to a 32-13 victory over the Eagles.
“It was a key play in the game,” Dollarway coach Cortez Lee said. “I thought Crossett played well, even on that play right there. … Fortunately, we scored and carried the momentum throughout the rest of that quarter. Just a great job of executing when we needed to.”
Cornerback Tracy Smith helped Dollarway make up for its mistakes with interceptions on three straight Crossett drives in the final quarter. His first pick set up the drive capped by Williams’ long carry. He returned his second pick to the Crossett 6, and Dollarway took advantage with a touchdown sneak by Long.
“I saw that they were killing us in the seam,” Smith said. “Therefore, we changed and made our linebackers sit, and once the quarterback rolled out, I dropped down from my coverage. When I had him, I read him. When I chose to come down, I came down with the ball.”
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Dollarway (3-0) finished with 340 rushing yards and 355 total yards. Williams ran eight times for 96 yards, all in the second half, and Jeremiah Young led Dollarway with 14 carries for 124 yards.
“Right now in some of these subpar conditions, we have to lean on it,” Lee said, talking in the middle of the wet grass. “But the things we said we wanted to work on and get better at, I think we took a step back tonight. Hopefully we can go back to the drawing board and get it corrected.”
The Cardinals, who are off to their best start since their 1992 state championship season, held the Eagles (1-2) to 75 rushing yards. Crossett quarterback River Johnson completed 16 of 26 passes for 149 yards, including a 25-yard touchdown pass to Dominic Bridges that gave the Eagles a 7-0 lead late in the first quarter. Johnson also was sacked four times.
Trailing 8-7 at halftime, the Eagles recovered fumbles on the Cardinals’ first two drives of the second half, but were forced three-and-out both times. The Cardinals went 42 yards on five plays in their next drive and scored on a Long-to-Davonne Chapman pass that made it 16-7 with a two-point conversion.
Crossett answered on its next drive from its own 47. Johnson snuck into the end zone from a yard out to pull Crossett with 16-13, but the extra-point attempt failed.
Dollarway had the ball for only for 8 minutes in the first half, thanks in part to three turnovers. A muffed punt recovered by Crossett set up the first scoring drive from the Dollarway 20, and the Cardinals mishandled the ensuing kickoff, only to stop the Eagles on downs.
Dollarway went ahead 8-7 one minute into the second quarter on a 2-yard keeper by Long and two-point conversion catch by Kabion Ento. The scoring drive went nine plays for 75 yards, aided by a 35-yard run by Long to the Crossett 23.
Crossett could not score on two drives in field goal range in the quarter. Johnson mishandled a snap in field goal formation and was stopped for an 8-yard loss to the Dollarway 16, and the Cardinals blocked an Edgar Urbina kick as time expired.
Still, the Eagles felt good at intermission to be trailing by one, hoping to pull off the upset after taking a 34-6 licking from Fordyce a week earlier.
“We were still there,” Crossett coach Mark Kelley said. “It was the same thing at Fordyce, and there we couldn’t get breaks our way, but today at least we were able to throw and catch the ball. We competed a lot better today than we did at Fordyce, and I was proud of that. But there are no moral victories in this game.”