UMS-Wright’s Perry Hand (14) celebrates one of his two touchdowns against T.R. Miller Friday night in Brewton. The Bulldogs knocked off the No. 3-ranked Class 3A Tigers 29-6. (Allison Terrell/Call News)
UMS-Wright coach Sam Williams directs the Bulldogs during Friday nigh’s 29-6 win over T.R. Miller in Brewton. (Allison Terrell/Call News)
T.R. Miller coach Ronnie Cottrell was frustrated that his Tigers couldn’t get anything going offensively against UMS-Wright Friday night. (Allison Terrell/Call News)
By JIMMY WIGFIELD
BREWTON — Blink and you might have missed UMS-Wright running another play on Friday night.
Blink — as T.R. Miller did first, last and everywhere in between — and you get beaten decisively, as the No. 3-ranked Class 3A Tigers were.
The Class 5A Bulldogs (3-2) used their frenetic pace to dominate the line of scrimmage and stopped previously undefeated Miller on downs three times in the red zone in a 29-6 victory at Brewton Memorial Stadium.
Perry Hand scored on runs of 14 and 2 yards and Richard Scott added a 1-yard scoring run and a 28-yard catch and run from quarterback Max Fowler as UMS-Wright rushed for 206 yards while holding the Tigers to just 75 yards — or 94 below their average.
Scott ran for 83 yards on 19 carries and Hand had 69 on nine carries for the Bulldogs, who scored twice in the fourth quarter to shear themselves away from Miller and win despite committing three turnovers.
“It was more of a mentality change,” said first-year UMS-Wright coach Sam Williams, who vowed to play fast and throw the ball more when he succeeded the legendary Terry Curtis, who was at Friday night’s game. “We knew we had to be physical and I wanted to see if we could do it. I knew how physical they were going to be and we came out tonight and tried to hit them in the mouth and they hit us back and we kept swinging. And that was good to see because that’s something we’re gonna have to do to win championships later in the year.”
Williams won’t use the year of transition between the way Curtis did things and the way he does things as an excuse to not contend for the state championship, which is what the Bulldogs are accustomed to — as their nine Blue Maps attest.
“The tempo wears people down over time,” said Williams, who took Class 7A Brandon to the Mississippi state finals in three of the previous four years before coming to UMS-Wright. “I’m not one of those guys that thinks that I’m some offensive savant or genius. That’s just what I do. I took the approach of coming in and telling them, ‘Hey, man, there’s a lot of different ways to do things. Coach Curtis did a great job doing it one way and we’re going to do it a little different and if y’all buy in and believe, we’re going to be good. And that’s what they did.”
While the Tigers (5-1) ran as many plays as the Bulldogs (63-62), UMS-Wright’s tempo made it difficult for Miller to set its defense.
“It creates confusion,” Tigers coach Ronnie Cottrell said. “They made the decision to throw less than what they had done in previous games and lined up and ran it. I thought coach Williams did an excellent job.”
The Bulldogs’ style nearly beat St. Paul’s in the season opener and nearly upset No. 1-ranked Vigor 39-26 two weeks ago. That was a 31-26 game in the fourth quarter.
“You can kind of neutralize a little bit of talent when talent gets tired and I think it’s been really good for us,” Williams said. “It’s obviously not perfect yet. It’s year one and we’re still trying to learn the answers of what we do but I am really proud of them. They’ve just got to keep chipping away at it.”
Miller — which had won 10 straight home games — kept chipping away and got nowhere.
The Tigers trailed 15-0 at halftime but cut it to 15-6 late in the third quarter on Jaylen Griffey’s 25-yard touchdown reception from Cole McMcMillan in which he tore out of the grasp of two defenders.
But Miller got stopped on the goal line the series before, when linebacker Logan Loftin shot through to make the first contact on quarterback T.J. Hanson on fourth-and-goal at the Bulldogs’ 3.
The stop on the goal line was satisfying for Williams and his players because they couldn’t stop St. Paul’s star Tank Jones on the goal line in overtime in a season-opening 29-28 loss.
“That was huge,” Williams said. “You go through things in a season where you see growth in your kids. I know that those kids wanted that moment again and they got it again and we got it done tonight. It kind of helped that Tank wasn’t in the backfield.”
The Tigers — who had recovered 14 fumbles coming into the game — lost a fumble to UMS-Wright’s Mack Keaton at the Bulldogs’ 35 on their first possession and turned the ball over on downs at the UMS-Wright 24 in the second quarter and the Bulldogs’ 9 in the fourth quarter.
No answers for UMS-Wright’s tempo and physicality could be found in the red folder tucked under Cottrell’s arm. The last time Miller was held to six points or less was a 28-0 loss to Montgomery Academy in the 2021 playoffs — 43 games ago.
“I put all this on me,” said Cottrell, who absorbed his first loss after returning to his alma mater. “I didn’t have my team prepared. That was a good football team. They played very disciplined and they were very physical. We had our chances and, in this game, we needed to have momentum. We just were never really in it. I think everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. We will learn a lot from this game. When things go bad, are they going to continue to pull together? Are we going to blame others? This one’s on me. I didn’t have them prepared and they just beat us.”
Bulldogs quarterback Max Fowler, who celebrated the win with a backflip, was 10-of-21 passing for 100 yards but was intercepted twice. However, UMS-Wright converted 8 of 13 third downs while holding Miller to 2 of 13.
“They’re a really physical team and we knew that coming into the game and we were ready to give them all we got,” Fowler said. “We knew that we were going to have to be even more physical than they were.”
