Tennessee all-stars win 31-10 over Georgia

The two-headed quarterback combo of Josh Blake and Nicn Hughes was too much for Team Georgia to handle Saturday night in the Tennessee-Georgia All-Star football game at Ridgeland High School.

Blake was named most valuable player after rushing for a new game record of 87 yards on nine carries and a touchdown, while Hughes added 162 yards and two touchdowns through the air in a 31-10 win.

“We were able to do a lot of things with those two,” said winning coach E.K. Slaughter, now at Cleveland High. “They gave us a lot of options. The big thing was how we represented ourselves tonight.”

Georgia took a 7-0 lead in under three minutes on a Brian Owens touchdown run, but the Tennessee team ran off 21 consecutive points with Hughes completing touchdown passes of 10 yards to Donovan Barnes and 6 yards to J.P. Cisco. In between, Grace Academy’s Blake ran for a 1-yard score.

“There was a lot of pride in this,” said Hughes, the former Boyd-Buchanan star who is walking on at the University of Alabama. “We had a goal to come out and win, and we did. This was a great experience, with so many different people from different backgrounds coming together.”

Georgia rallied in the fourth quarter on an Owens 20-yard pass to Alabama-bound Mike Bowman, who wrestled the ball away form a defender in the end zone. However, Tennessee used two Joe Muir interceptions to score twice late to put the game away.

See the Tennessee edition of Sunday’s Times Free Press for more information.