Baker stuns No. 3 Mary Montgomery 43-28 behind unstoppable Graham-to-Marion connection

 

 

 

By JIMMY WIGFIELD

SEMMES — Few gave Baker a chance to upset Mary G. Montgomery Friday night and at least rattle the Vikings’ dominance of their region over the last three years. But if quarterback Tate Graham, receiver Khatori Marion and running back Jailen “Speedy” Wheeler keep the big plays coming, the rest of the state had better approach the Hornets with caution.

Graham threw four touchdown passes to Marion and Myles Johnson’s 27-yard pick-six late in the game tossed the last shovel of dirt on MGM as Baker stunned the No. 3-ranked Vikings 43-28 Friday night at E.S. Grider Stadium.

Graham completed 15 of 24 passes for 225 yards, with Marion grabbing four scoring throws of 39, 73, 33 and 6 yards on his way to 10 receptions for 175 yards.

“It’s satisfying, I must admit,” said first-year Hornets coach Eric Scott, whose team lost a 14-0 lead to MGM last year in a 34-31 overtime defeat. “Any win against this program, we’re going to appreciate it.”

Marion, a three-star South Alabama commitment, said the victory sent a message to the rest of the state: “They should always look out for Baker. Stop sleeping on us.”

The Hornets (6-2, 5-1 7A Region 1) denied the Vikings (8-1, 5-1) their third straight region championship and ended MGM’s winning streaks of 22 straight region games and 17 straight regular-season wins. Instead, Baker can win the region if it defeats Fairhope at home Friday night.

Scott said he isn’t concerned about what opposing teams think of the Hornets, only how they feel about themselves.

“We don’t worry about that,” he said. “We just want to continue to get better each week, come out and play ball. We’ll continue to show people who we are and we’ll let that play out.”

Meanwhile, Vikings coach Zach Golson suffered his first October loss in the four years he has been at MGM (13-1).

“Sometimes, what we need in life is a little bit of humble pie and tonight we got that,” Golson said. “Maybe it’s at the right time. Hats off to them. Coach Scott had them ready tonight. We really struggled to stop them.”

Scott told his players afterward that they showed him something extraordinary.

“I cannot be more proud of the way you came out tonight locked in,” he said. “I saw it from the beginning and I just wanted to see if we were going to finish. You showed championship DNA right there.”

Mary Montgomery couldn’t stop Marion, particularly on slants, and couldn’t stop Wheeler on the ground. Marion’s 73- and 33-yard touchdown receptions came on slant routes and Wheeler had 156 yards on 16 carries against a defense that was allowing just 85 yards rushing per game.

“A lot of it was a lot of man (coverage),” Marion said. “I just knew I had to get the job done.”

Graham said the Hornets took advantage of the Vikings’ aggressiveness and overshifted defense and were able to isolate Marion.

“Khatori’s a great athlete,” Graham said. “We saw that when we would line up in a certain formation, they would move their defense toward the formation away from Khatori, so it left Khatori one on one. It gave us an opportunity to attack that one-on-one matchup and Khatori won those one on ones.”

Wheeler, who had four touchdowns in last year’s loss to MGM, broke a 31-yard scoring run in the third quarter, with 117 of his 156 yards coming in the second half after the Vikings adjusted to the slants and opened some running room.

“We’ve been waiting on this moment,” said Wheeler, whose shoulder was wrapped after an injury late in the game. “Last year, we didn’t finish but this year we did. We let them off the hook last year. We shouldn’t have lost to them. Last year, we took our foot off the gas. This year, we kept on there all the way through.”

Graham said the victory over Mary Montgomery tasted much better than last year’s bitter loss.

“We had the sour taste in our mouth all week after last year,” he said. “I threw the interception at the end of the game to give them the lead, so that play flashed in my mind all week long and just gave me motivation.”

Mary Montgomery led only once at 28-23 after an 85-yard, 13-play drive to open the second half, which Kam Smith finished with an 8-yard TD run. But four plays later, Wheeler burst through MGM’s defense after the Vikings walked a safety down to give the Hornets the lead for good at 29-28.

Baker followed that with a 72-yard, 12-play drive for Graham’s 6-yard scoring pass to Marion to lead 36-28. Marion kept the drive alive by breaking off an out route for a 12-yard gain on fourth-and-7.

Johnson stepped in front of a receiver and brought back the interception from MGM quarterback Jeremy Menhennett 27 yards for the clinching touchdown with 2:12 left.

Golson said his team looked unusually sluggish.

“We’ve pushed our kids pretty hard for a while now,” he said. “To me, watching the game unfold, it felt like we ran out of gas a little bit. We didn’t play with the same tempo and physicality that we normally do. But a lot of that is a credit to them. … This journey is already written. The story is already written. We’ve just got to keep trying to seek it out every day. We’ll go back to work. We’ll look at where we made mistakes and try to get them corrected.”

Menhennett threw a 71-yard touchdown pass to Jakenyon Allen off a wide receiver screen in the second quarter and Shondell Harris added TD runs of 2 and 13 yards.

Allen had six catches for 158 yards and Smith ran for 90 yards on 25 carries. Menhennett was 7-of-21 passing for 168 yards.

Scott said the Hornets will have little time to enjoy the victory with a chance to win the region next week.

“When you show up Sunday, flush it and get back to work because nothing we did this week is going to matter next week,” he told his players.