CRESTVIEW — Cross town bragging rights gave way to caution Thursday night when Davidson Middle School played host to Shoal River at Crestview High School’s Jack Foster Stadium.
With both teams in the county semifinals next week neither Davidson Coach Chris Small or Mustang Coach Ryan Gillis was eager to risk injury in a game that had no affect on the standings.
Shoal River, the defending champions, entered the game as the top seed. The Panthers are the three seed and the game didn’t count in the regular season standings.
It didn’t take the Mustangs long to show why they are the top team in the county with a 30-6 win.
“That puts an exclamation mark on the regular season,” Gillis said. “Now we are moving to the playoffs and that’s our real season. We are 0-0 and the rest of it doesn’t matter.
“Coach Small and I are good friends and I would much rather play him (in the championship game) than anybody else.”
Shoal River forced a Davidson fumble on the first play from scrimmage. Kamari Horn recovered the fumble for the Mustangs at the Davidson 39-yard line.
One play later Shoal River’s Chris Johns was off and running with the game’s first score. Rawson Mack added the 2-point conversion and the Mustangs never trailed.
The Panthers were forced to punt from their own end zone their next possession. Davidson misplayed the snap barely advancing the ball out of the end zone to avoid the safety.
Marklear Johnson scored on the next play for Shoal River. Johnson also converted the 2-point conversion. In just two plays from scrimmage Shoal River managed two touchdowns.
Shoal River’s last two touchdowns came on runs of 15 and 28 yards by Marquis McCoy. The first came with seven minutes left in the first half. The 28-yard score put Shoal River up 30-0 with 6:56 left in the third quarter.
Davidson’s only score came on an 8-yard run by quarterback Matthew Peters with 2:45 left in the third quarter. A Stephon Brown run covering 46 yards set up the score by Peters.
Small said he played the game with the playoffs in mind.
“We’ve got Pryor next week,” he said. “We got some people rested. We got some people some playing time.
“And we got a lot of kids in there that hadn’t had any playing time and they got a lot tonight. We had several starters not suiting up and Coach Gillis could have beat us 100-0 by halftime if they had wanted to.”
Davidson plays Pryor at Choctaw on Thursday. Shoal River hosts Ruckel.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Shoal River cruises past Davidson (PHOTOS)