Southside Christian celebrated its first region win of the season Friday at home, 28-24, by taking a knee at the Clinton 5-yard line, after the Red Devils took their final timeout with 1 minute to play.
The Sabres out-muscled Clinton for 326 yards on 53 carries in the contest for their fourth win. Clinton falls to 3-3, and faces another road, region game this coming Friday at Chesnee, a 45-42 region action loser Friday to Mountain View Prep.
Highlighting the game for Clinton was Gray Garrett’s 40-yard field goal with :03 to play in the first half, staking the Red Devils to a 17-14 halftime lead. The lead was short-lived, though, as Clinton lost a fumble early in the 2nd half. Southside Christian ran it in for as touchdown, and a 21-17 3rd quarter lead.
Clinton came right back, however, with a scoring run by senior QB Owen Glenn. That was a 9-yard score capping a 5-play, 60-yard drive.
Southside Christian then broke free on a 4th and 1 run, to push their 3rd quarter lead to 28-24. The final Southside Christian drive started on their own 9-yard line with 5 minutes to play and ended in the victory formation at the Clinton 5.
“I’m proud of my kids. This (Southside Christian) is a good football team,” Clinton Football Head Coach Corey Fountain said. “Give a lot of credit to Southside Christian, they’re a good football team, and we came into the game, we battled. It was a bruising game, a physical, fast game; in the first half, they were trying to up the tempo. Our guys held strong. We were able to get a field goal, get some momentum coming into the half, (and then) come out, kick off, get a stop, and we dropped the ball. And when you’re playing a team as good as you are, or evenly matched, you can’t turn the ball over. You can’t have penalties; we cut down on the penalties tonight, but that turnover really killed us.”
Also damaging to the Clinton defense was the fact that the Sabres’ running back Jaylen Samuels carried the ball 29 times for 199 yards and quarterback Aaron Gilliam gained 127 yards on 24 rushes.
Fountain said the team’s mindset moving into the second game of “the second season” is “just keeping getting better – last week of practice, I felt like we were more prepared this week. We just got to cut down on the mistakes. As we keep moving forward and getting better, maybe we’ll get some guys back and maybe we won’t; but whoever we put out there has to step up and play to the standards that are Clinton High football, and we’re going to try to keep moving forward and prepare for Chesnee (a 45-43 loser at Mountain View Prep) and watch the film and make corrections and be ready to go (for practice) on Monday.”
Clinton had a 1st quarter TD taken off the board by an illegal block penalty (the Red Devils were flagged 5 times for 30 yards), and Southside Christian took the lead with 53 seconds to play in the 1st quarter. Angelo Cromer tied the game at 7 with a 67-yard scoring run for Clinton, just 40 seconds later. In the 2nd quarter, Southside Christian busted its first 4th and 1 scoring run but then committed two costly penalties that let Clinton have a shot at the endzone on a Jaiden Jeter run. That was at the end of a 15-play, 70-yard drive that took 7:50 off the clock before halftime. Clinton’s defense held near mid-field, and the Red Devils were able to position Garrett for his field goal try – the successful kick was the longest of the Coach Fountain era at Clinton.
Damajia Crooks had a stellar night for Clinton, catching 7 of Glenn’s 13 pass completions (in 19 attempts) for 107 of Clinton’s 196 yards through the air. Southside Christian’s stout defensive line held Clinton to 111 yards on 32 rushing attempts. Angelo Cromer gained 76 yards, on 13 attempts, for the Clinton run game.
Southside Christian’s 63 offensive plays went for 368 yards against the Red Devil defense. The Sabres improved to 4-2 on the season, 1-0 in region play – they lost to Boiling Springs and Wren in forfeits, and defeated Woodmont, in overtime, Laurens, and JL Mann. The Sabres go up against Woodruff this coming Friday night. Clinton, now 3-3, will host the Wolverines in the regular season finale on Oct. 30.
