Cottage Hill quarterback Shamar Toodle gets ready to pass against Bayside Academy Friday might at Cottage Hill. Toodle never got into a good rhythm and was 18-of-30 passing for 105 yards in a 35-21 loss. (Scott Donaldson/Call News)
Cottage Hill’s Joshua McCants celebrates one of his two fumble recoveries against Bayside. Both set up touchdowns but the Warriors fell, 35-21. (Scott Donaldson)
Cottage Hill’s J.J. Davis sticks Bayside’s John Ben Wilkinson near the goal line and causes a fumble out of the end zone during a conversion try early in Friday night’s game. Wilkinson was the holder and tried to get in for a two-point conversion after fumbling the snap on the extra-point kick. (Scott Donaldson/Call News)
By JIMMY WIGFIELD
MOBILE — No. 3-ranked Bayside Academy once again relied on a simple mathematical formula to dismantle yet another opponent Friday night.
Davis Barnett + no sacks + no interceptions + five receivers = victory.
Barnett completed 26 of 35 passes for a career-high 359 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Admirals to a 35-21 win over Cottage Hill Christian Academy and keep them in a first-place tie with Mobile Christian for the private school Class A Region 1 lead.
In a confrontation that teased of a combustible faceoff between two of the private school classification’s top quarterbacks, Barnett clearly got the better of it against the Warriors’ Shamar Toodle, the latest star of the famous athletic family.
Toodle never seemed comfortable in the pocket, completing just 18 of 30 passes for 105 yards, and managing only 67 yards on 20 carries.
“He converted a lot of third downs with his legs but it was never anything too far,” Bayside coach Barrett Trotter said. “Our defensive line and linebackers did a great job containing him for the most part.”
CHCA scored all of its points off Admirals mistakes — a blocked punt and two fumbles deep in Bayside territory — and got outgained 428 yards to 187.
Meanwhile, the Admirals (5-1, 4-0) used Barnett’s precision possession passing game to spread the field and breathe life into scoring drives of 80, 80, 80 and 74 yards.
In one stretch bridging the first and second halves, Barnett completed 16 of 17 passes, including 10 straight in the second half.
“This is a game that we had to win,” Barnett said. “Coming off last week (a loss to St. Michael), getting into some real region play now, we had to come out with the W.”
Yet the game remained tantalizingly close at 21-21 going into the fourth quarter before Bayside scored 14 points in a span of four minutes to finally subdue the Warriors (4-2, 2-2).
Two plays into the fourth quarter, Barnett launched a rare deep ball on second-and-1 and found wideout Mason Edwards, who battled CHCA defensive back Gavin Archible for the ball in front of Cottage Hill’s bench before snatching it out of the air. With the Warriors’ coaches screaming for an offensive pass interference call, Edwards sprinted 65 yards for a touchdown to give the Admirals the lead for good with 11:07 to go.
“I always tell my guys, man, if you leave it in referee’s hands, it’s never gonna go your way,” CHCA coach Carvel Jones said.
About four minutes later, Bayside forced a punt from Cottage Hill’s end zone and drove just 29 yards for Sam Cunningham’s 1-yard run and a 35-21 lead.
Barnett — the top quarterback in Class A in passing yards and quarterback rating (159) — was not sacked, has yet to throw an interception this season in 144 attempts and now owns 25 TD passes. He completed passes to five receivers, most prominently Edwards, who had three catches for 78 yards; Cunningham, who had seven catches for 101 yards; and Walker Collins, who had 10 for 96 yards.
Jones might have wished it had rained since CHCA was one of the few schools in south Alabama that elected to play Friday night instead of Thursday night to avoid a predicted downpour.
Instead, the only thing that rained down was Barnett’s completions, as the Warriors allowed a season-high 35 points, only the ninth time that has happened to CHCA in 38 games over four season under Jones.
“Anytime we score 21, in my mind, we’ve got to win, so that’s on me on the defensive side,” Jones said. “They do a good job with a lot of movement stuff, getting the ball in space, getting the ball out quick. I thought we were in a position a lot of times and things just didn’t go our way.”
Executing well enough to defend Barnett and his repertoire of receivers and routes proved a demanding task.
“Davis does a heck of a job getting the ball to the right place and reading the defense and going through his reads,” Trotter said. “And our receivers have done a heck of a job.”
Barnett threw a 25-yard scoring pass to Cunningham in the first quarter to cut the Warriors’ lead to 7-6 but he didn’t get into a rhythm until he completed five straight passes in an 80-yard drive that took just 56 seconds and ended with a 19-yard TD pass to Collins, who spun away from defensive back Xykais Thomas to get separation at the goal line.
The Admirals’ Cooper Mason then pulled off a two-point conversion on an old-fashioned waterbucket play to tie it 14-14 at halftime.
“I feel like I’ve got the best guys around me that I could possibly have,” Barnett said. “Even when I make a bad throw, they make a good catch. We started off slow but a lot of that’s on me. When I started getting the playmakers and guys the ball, the game flipped. It was me not communicating the calls back and forth. I take a lot of that blame. I’ve got to clean it up.”
Barnett’s other touchdown pass was a 36-yarder in the third quarter to the 6-foot-5 Ward Hix, who was double covered but reached over a safety at the goal line to snare the ball.
Toodle scored on a 1-yard run after Joshua McCants recovered a fumble at Bayside’s 4 in the first quarter, Connor Lesure scored from a yard out in the second quarter after Cohen Perea blocked a punt at the Admirals’ 40 in the second quarter and McCants had a 4-yard TD run after he recovered another fumble and returned it to Bayside’s 9 in the third quarter.
“We just couldn’t get out of our way for a while there,” Trotter said.
But in the fourth quarter, the Admirals outgained the Warriors 155 yards to 18.
“It’s a four-quarter fight and our kids showed up and they kept swinging and they never backed down,” Trotter said. “We finally got our heads out from wherever it was the first three quarters. The defense really did a heck of a job. We gave them a bad field almost the entire night and they had a bunch of stops down in the low red area, some big fourth-down stops. I thought our DBs played a heck of a game, tackling out in space, getting off blocks and then also playing the ball down the field.”
Cottage Hill turned the ball over on downs at Bayside’s 29, 33, 39 and 21 and Mac McGrew missed a 40-yard field goal from the 23.
“We didn’t capitalize on a few turnovers and the (field) position that we had,” Jones said. “We’ve got to tighten up on a few things on the defensive side. We played well on special teams, had a blocked punt. We’ve just got to get back to work on Monday and focus on ourselves.”
