2011 Playoffs Round 1 vs Greensboro

Everyone new going into the season that we would both have good teams.  Neal returned a number of quality players from their '94 team including outstanding runner Phillip Jones.  We were coming off our 1994 State Championship, and we also had several key players returning.  As the season began, we both started winning our games by some big scores.  Each week the fans on both sides of the creek compared each other's scores as if they were looking for the chink in the other team's armor.  But both kept on winning.  Neal shut out four straight opponents at mid season.  Every week the anticipation got a little greater.

By game week the whole community was in a fever pitch.  I remember watching film of Neal's defense and trying to find some weakness to attack. There just didn't seem to be one.  They had two big defensive ends, a big middle linebacker and had very fast defensive backs.  I tried to play it kind of low key because I knew the players were really excited.  The one thing that was different than the Alabama -LSU game was that we were all here in one community. You couldn't get away from the game.  If you went to the grocery store, everyone wanted to know about the game.  I just didn't go anywhere but home.  I know that the players were hearing it at home.  They knew the Neal players well and all of their families were constantly talking about it. They couldn't get away from the game either.

By Wednesday I was getting constant messages to call newspaper and television reporters.  It was like a state championship game.  My phone was constantly ringing.  About Thursday I heard our coaches talking about people betting on the game.  Some had called our coaches that they knew and told them what the line was on the game.  They wanted to know if they should take the bets.  I just walked away from that. I didn't even get on to them for even discussing betting because I had way bigger fish to fry.  The weather had been wet all week.  It hampered our preparation some but worst of all  I knew what the field conditions were going to be.  The game was being played in East Brewton and their field was always muggy if it had rained at all in the week prior to the game.  As much as it had rained I knew the field conditions would make it tougher to score.

We had some excellent players who had played in some big games.  Scott Sasser was our QB and he had some able receivers in Jason Madden and Jeremy Bradley.  Micheal Bell and Wayne Lodge led our offensive line.  Shawn Johnson was the bell cow of our defense, a truly great linebacker.  Benny Campbell and Tristan Moore were not only fine running backs but also good defenders.  Tristan was a real force at noseguard.  I was confident that we could win the game. I was just glad to see Friday finally arrive. Everyone had on their team colors throughout Brewton and East Brewton. I tried to be cool but I was pretty nervous.  Two undefeated teams.....two big rivals.

The bus ride to East Brewton was the strangest I could remember.  There was absolutely no traffic on Highway 31 and none in downtown Brewton. They put some signs up on the Murder Creek bridge to remind us that we were going to get beat.  As we approached the stadium you could here the crowd.  People had started arriving in early afternoon to line up to go in the gates.  Neal did not have a lot of visitor's bleachers and if you wanted a seat you had to be there sometime that afternoon.  I do remember going out for warmups an hour before the game.  You had to wade through the crowd just to make it through the gate. Their fans were yelling insults at us as we approached the field, something that I found pretty funny. When the first red helmet showed at the field a tremendous roar went up from our crowd.  We literally had to fight the crowd to get to the field.  They were already 4 and 5 deep around the fence and it was an hour before the game.  It felt good to finally get on the field to warm up but I was shocked by the condition of the field.  It was soggy everywhere and some places were worse than others.  We did our normal stretches and most of our players were already pretty muddy.  I talked to the officials before the game and I got the impression they had never seen anything quite like it.  That is because one of them said, " I have never seen anything like this."  I was a little nervous about them.

The game finally started.  I have never been involved in a game that was that loud.  After the first couple of plays the head official came to the sideline and said, "We can't hear our own whistles out there.  Remind the players to be careful about late hits.  They want be able to hear a whistle."  I believe we stopped them and made them punt.  On our first play from scrimmage, Scott hit Tristan Moore with a pass out of the backfield and hit went like lightning down the sideline.  They hit him out of bounds late and our fans went nuts.  No penalty.  Then after the play a flag got thrown.  The head official came over and said, "Coach, I'm going to have to penalize you.  One of your coaches told me I needed to move my husky bottom over there and make that call. (As you can probably know, he didn't say husky bottom. He said something similar).  "You hear our fans booing," I said. "They never boo. But the reason they are booing is because they hit our kid about five yards out of bounds and you guys didn't call it.  If you penalize us now I scared about what the crowd might do."  He looked at me for a few seconds and picked up the flag. "No penalty," he yelled. "First down Miller".  I looked down on the other end of the sideline because I know which ever coach said it would be as far away from me as possible.  About thirty yards from me stood Greg Ennis, hiding behind someone. I sent him word not to open his mouth again.

It was a great game.  I haven't watched the film in years so I have forgotten some of the details.  I know we were behind and trying to catch up. In the 3rd quarter we got down on their end of the field.  The field was getting worse with every play.  We needed a big play so I called a little handoff reverse play to Jason Madden that we called Smoke.  Jason bounced it outside and got us near the goal line.  I think Tristan scored and I can remember watching people go nuts in the end zone. The fourth quarter brought three of the biggest plays I have seen in my coaching career.  We were still behind and Neal's great back Tim Bailey had the ball near the Neal sideline.  Jeremy Bradley went to tackle him and saw the ball and just grabbed it out of his hands just before going out of bounds.  On the next play Scott Sasser hit Shawn Johnson with a TD pass and we were ahead.  We had the ball with about a minute left near our on goalline and it was fourth down.  The score was 18-12.  Rather than try and punt the ball out of the end zone we decided to go ahead and take a safety and punt it at the 20 yardline.  We snapped the ball to our punter Jason Madden and he started running around in the end zone killing time.  The way we taught the players to do it was to tackle the Neal players and try and hold them on the ground.  If they get up tackle them from behind but don't let them get to the punter.  They will call us for holding but the other team has to decline the penalty or we just do it again.  Our guys went to tackling and bulldogging the Neal rushers to the ground.  They did such a good job that the Neal punt returner finally came up and ran Jason out of the end zone. We all looked at the clock and we couldn't believe our eyes.  The official forgot to start the clock.  I went to chewing on the head official and he conferred with the others.  They declared that we would get 17 seconds run off the clock. What a play!

We punted from the 20 and Neal started throwing passes but time was running out.  All of the sudden they stopped the clock because we had an injured player. I couldn't believe Shannon Ballard was laying on the field.  I ran all the way to the other sideline and this is pretty much word for word what I said. "I can't believe you are laying on the field stopping the clock. We are about one play from beating Neal and if you could get your butt off the field, we could go ahead and win." He made some excuse about why he couldn't move and I jerked him up and dragged him off the field with him apologizing all the way to our sideline. We intercepted and the game was finally over.  I never did think we would make it out of there.  I must have hugged everyone in Brewton on the way to the bus.  Somehow we managed to  get everyone on the buses and head back to the other side of the creek.  We would play them four weeks later in the semi finals and beat them by 20 points.  The following week we lost a close game in Alexandria in the worst weather I have ever seen in the championship game.  Although they were never crowned as a champion, the 1995 team was as good as any team I have ever coached at T.R. Miller.

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