The James River Knights fell behind early, rallied to tie and then lost in the final minutes of a Three Rivers District football game in Springwood last Friday. Floyd County scored in the last two minutes and held off a late River threat to win 28-21.
“We let ’em get ahead of us early but we played well in the second half,” said River coach Jack Baker. “We played a quality opponent even but we have no one to blame but ourselves.”
Floyd led 21-0 at the half as Buffalo quarterback Sam Phillips ran for a first quarter score and threw for two more in the second quarter, one for 29 yards and another for 47. The Knights regrouped in the locker room and came out fired up for the second half.
“I didn’t say a whole at halftime, we just did things better in the second half,” said Baker.
River cut the lead to 21-13 after three quarters as Gavin Binns finished off drives with touchdown runs of one and 15 yards, with the extra point kick failing on the second TD. Binns scored his third touchdown on a seven-yard run with 9:11 to go in the game and River tied the score at 21-21 when quarterback Merit Hammons found Landon Dillow in the end zone for a two-point conversion.
That’s how the score stood heading into the final two minutes, but Phillips ran one in from a yard out with 1:21 left and the kick was good as Floyd went up 28-21. River fired back again, moving into the red zone with time running out before the Buffaloes picked off a pass in the shadow of their own goal posts to kill the threat with 10 seconds remaining.
“We showed we can play some good football, but we’re just not consistent,” said Baker.
River amassed 411 yards of total offense to 339 for the visitors. Binns had another big night with 208 yards rushing and Hammons threw for 169 yards. Wyatt DeWhirst had four catches for 48 yards, Ashton Orange had two for 70 and Ryder Ward had two catches for 16 yards.
Defensively, Landon Flores and Eli Baldwin led the Knights with nine tackles each. Jayden Alston and Efraim Echavarria had eight each and Ryan Daniels had seven. Ward had a fumble recovery and Alston had two tackles for losses.
Photos by Leigh Downey
The loss dropped River to 4-4 on the season but the Knights held on to the sixth spot in the Virginia High School League Region 2C rankings. With the win Floyd improved to 7-1 and is third in the region behind Glenvar and Gretna.
This Friday the Knights go to Stuart to face Patrick County in a district game. The Cougars are 3-6 and eighth in the rankings, with the top eight making the playoffs. They’ll be fighting for their playoff lives this Friday.
“They like to run the football,” said Baker of the Cougars. “They run a lot of different formations.”
The Knights can all but clinch a playoff spot with a win Friday.
“If we do the things we need to do, the playoffs will take care of itself,” said Baker.
