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— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 5, 2015
HARTSVILLE, Tenn. – Hogan Whitmire changed hats and Reese Phillips and Signal Mountain’s Eagles refused to get down or give up in a 46-36 Class 2A football playoff victory Friday night against top-ranked Trousdale County.
The loss was only the fifth for the Yellow Jackets in coach Kevin Creasy’s four seasons and their first to an in-state team since a 2007 playoff loss to South Pittsburg.
“I’m exhausted,” croaked Signal coach Bill Price.
No more than Whitmire, who ran almost as much as he threw, and Phillips, the versatile youngster who didn’t leave the field except on kickoff coverage for the second-ranked Eagles.
Whitmire, showing a side that had been seen only rarely, rushed 11 times for 93 yards. Phillips played wide receiver, quarterback and tight end on offense, held on placement kicks and also turned in his second straight game at cornerback. He came up with two interceptions, one of which was serious icing on the playoff-advancing cake.
Picked on a couple of times for first-half touchdown passes, Phillips got his payback in the final two minutes and keyed the victory in a seesaw battle.
“They were running outside a bunch, but, yeah, I messed up in the first half,” he said. “You stick with it, though. This is the playoffs.”
Phillips returned his first pickoff 18 yards to give the unbeaten Eagles their final 10-point spread. His second was a meager couple of yards from the Eagles’ end zone, but it came with a 10-point lead and 40 seconds left on the clock.
“It felt good after the early mess-ups, but I don’t want to be singled out,” he said. “This is the playoffs, it’s a team game and it’s all about team.”
After beating the top-ranked team, Signal (12-0) gets to return home. The Eagles will host Boyd-Buchanan, which also won on the road (at Wartburg Central).
“Gosh, I’m worn out,” Price said. “I feel like we have beat the best, or two of the best, Class 2A teams in the state the past two weeks. We won the game and it was a very emotional game, and I’m so very proud of our kids.”
The game was the state’s only matchup of unbeatens Friday and of a classification’s top two ranked teams, and it took as much defense as offense for the Eagles to survive a second straight shootout.
For all of their offensive firepower, the Eagles needed their defense and the guys who survived a 56-43 scoring free-for-all with Friendship Christian last week, came through with a key defensive stand. They forced Trousdale County to throw when it had to rather than when it wanted – on a fourth-and-12 from inside its 10-yard line. Phillips leaped high, picked off the pass and actually tiptoed – as best as a 6-foot-2, 215-pound guy can – into the Yellow Jackets’ end zone with 1:34 to play.
The defense also set up TDs with a pivotal fourth-and-2 stand inside Trousdale’s 40-yard line and a fumble recovery by tackle Will Sawyer at the Yellow Jackets’ 32.
Signal scored on its opening possession on a 4-yard run by Mitchell Hall but found itself down 14-7. They got up 22-14 on Hall’s second TD – a 7-yard run and Gervell Morgan’s 1-yard run (after the fumble recovery). It looked like the game was going to be tied at 22 at halftime, but Dane DeWet got a 21-yard field goal as time ran out.
Trousdale went up quickly 29-25 on a 61-yard pass that was tipped, but the Eagles took the lead for good on a 2-yard run by Donnie Garner and a 1-yard run by Morgan.
The key, though, again was provided by the defense before Morgan’s TD. The Eagles turned back a fourth-and-2 inside Trousdale’s 42 with a lost-yardage tackle by linebacker Zach Bowman.
