ONE-MAN WRECKING CREW with stats in PDF attached.
Bryson James almost single-handedly removed the stinger from the Union County Yellowjackets as he wrecked their special teams, played his usual stellar defense, ran the ball for 70 yards, and ripped off a 90-yard kickoff return to start the second half of Clinton’s 61-7 region win, on the road on Thursday.
Clinton improves to 7-0; Union County falls to 2-4. Clinton gets to get healthy next week with a bye; the rest of Region 4 AAA has to play each other – Woodruff vs Emerald and Union County vs Chester.
“Woodruff is a good team. It takes two weeks to prepare for them,” Clinton Football Head Coach Corey Fountain said.
Union County could have taken six weeks to prepare for Clinton and it probably wouldn’t have mattered. The Yellowjackets starting quarterback and punter Ben Black was out with an injury, and wide receiver BJ Porter ran the offense as well as he could. Union County managed a scoring pass after a long kickoff runback against the Clinton reserves.
Once Clinton reached a 42-point lead – which happened in the second quarter but didn’t count for this purpose until the third quarter – the SC High School League’s “mercy rule” kicked in and the second half was played with a running clock. As the game started, you wouldn’t have known anyway – the Union County clock manager couldn’t get the timepiece started at the beginning of game action.
Clinton wasn’t falling for that. The Red Devils knew what time it was – time to hit Union County in the mouth with a Bryson James touchdown run on its third play from scrimmage, a Jaden Crawford touchdown reception, a Brett Young fall on the ball in the end zone after James blocked a punt, a Jayden Robinson scoring run, an Austin Copeland scoring run after a Justin Copeland interception, another James TD after a Kadon Crawford fumble recovery, a Kason Copeland touchdown run, and then a missed 42-yard field goal.
Then, Clinton took a breath for halftime.
James ran Union County’s second half kickoff back for a touchdown. Clinton led 54-0 before Union County scored – for the game the Yellowjackets managed 3 first downs and earned 60 yards of total offense (just 8 in the first half because of sacks). Jishun Copeland ran the ball in from 49 yards out to post Clinton’s 61st point, with the conversion kick. Nobody scored in the fourth quarter, and Union County ended the game punting on a 4th and 12 from its own 2-yard line.
In 2018, Union County won this game 62-7; and in 2019 won this game 54-21. The margin shrank to a mere touchdown in Union County’s favor in 2020, the abbreviated COVID-19 season. In 2021’s 11-2 Clinton season, the Red Devils won this game, 56-21.
The last time Clinton scored this many points was 77 against Palmetto in the first round of the 2021 playoffs – but, remember, that season ended with a Clinton 52-7 loss to powerful Daniel, now the #1 team in the state in Class AAA.
Clinton now sits as the #3 team in the state in Class AAA and, more important, is 1-0 in the region.
