The Columbia Academy football team received a wakeup call Friday night at Purvis, losing 48-8 in a one-sided ball game.
Purvis (1-2) had been outscored 95-21 in its first two games, but they came against two teams — Oak Grove and West Marion — that are both 3-0 to begin the year. Columbia Academy head coach Randy Butler said he knew the Tornadoes were better than their record going into the game and were itching to beat the Cougars after a 42-39 loss last year.
“It was a lack of execution, and a lot of it had to do with (Purvis). They’re pretty good. You can’t look at the first two games, and that’s what we did,” he said. “They got beat pretty handily the first two games. But as a coach when you know what to look for, you can look at people and (see) they were doing good things but just played two good teams. We knew they were going to be better. It was their home opener, we beat them last year and all those things came into place to create a perfect storm. They were ready to play, and we weren’t.”
The Tornadoes put 41 points on the board in the first half alone, and Butler said the Cougars will need to work harder in being ready on both sides of the ball the week leading up to a game.
“The big thing is we’ve got to prepare better. I’ve got to do a better job preparing our team, and they’ve got to take some responsibility, too,” he said. “We played a good team. Although they were 0-2, they played two good teams. Coach (Brad) Hankins had them ready, and they produced and we didn’t. It showed on the field; we didn’t play well at all in all three phases.”
The Cougars were forced to punt on their first drive of the game, which led to Purvis scoring on a 2-yard run by Wayne Ray to make it 6-0 three minutes into the game. Columbia Academy’s offense failed to get going on its second possession and had to punt again, leading to another Purvis rushing touchdown to give the Tornadoes a 13-0 lead with four minutes remaining in the first quarter.
Quarterback Ras Pace finally found a rhythm on the ensuing possession and capped it off with a 1-yard plunge into the end zone a minute into the second quarter. Pace then ran in the 2-point conversion to cut the deficit to 13-8.
However, Purvis scored on back-to-back drives with a Cougars punt sandwiched in between. Mason Kendrick ran in both scores, one from 2 yards and the other from 10 yards to give the Tornadoes a comfortable 27-8 lead with three minutes to go.
Fumbles on consecutive Columbia Academy drives by Pace and Riles Stuart allowed Purvis to find pay dirt twice more before the end of the first half to put the game out of reach at 41-8. Butler harps on winning the turnover battle every day in practice and said the offense needs to do a better job protecting the football and the defense needs to improve on preventing turnovers from leading to points.
“We talk every day about defensively forcing turnovers and offensively not giving it up. Unfortunately that’s what happened. We turned it over. Defensively it’s your job and responsibility when the offense does turn it over to come back and get a stop,” he said. “That’s football, and we didn’t do it. It got pretty bad after that.”
Purvis added one more score to open the second half with Ray scampering for a 12-yard touchdown to push the margin to 40 at 48-8.
The Cougars offense managed just 137 yards of total offense, turned it over twice and had to punt four times. Meanwhile, the defense struggled to slow the Tornadoes’ rushing attack, which accounted for every Purvis touchdown.
Parklane Academy (3-0) will head to Columbia Academy Friday night and beat the Cougars 67-44 last year in a season that saw the Pioneers reach the MAIS AAAA State Championship. Pace threw for a career-high 395 yards and five touchdowns against Parklane last season, but it’s the Pioneers offense that ran for 498 yards and eight touchdowns in that game that has Butler worried.
“Defensively we have to line up and stop the run. They’re a tough football team. They’re running a little more spread this year because they have a really good quarterback that can sling it pretty good, but they’re going to try to run the football. That’s their deal, and we’ve got to line up, be physical and establish something early,” he said. “If we don’t do it this week, it’s going to be ugly again. They come at you.”
Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
Pictured Above: Columbia Academy running back Riles Stuart gets tackled against PCS in Hattiesburg Aug. 24. | Photo by Matt Bush
