CLASS 4A: St. James holds off Anniston to advance

St. James’ KJ Jackson breaks tackles in the win over Anniston on Friday. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

After an evenly played first quarter, the Anniston offense was hard to stop in the final three quarters of Friday’s playoff game with St. James, rolling up 373 yards while averaging 10.4 yards per play.

The Bulldogs made just two mistakes. And paid dearly for both.

St. James returned a fumble for a touchdown and blocked a punt to lead to another for a 28-26 win over Anniston in the first round of the 4A state playoffs at Carlisle Field on Friday night.

“Every play is going to be the game,” Perry told his players. “It can change the nature of the game and you’ve just got to make play after play after play because you don’t know when that play is coming. I thought one of the biggest plays in the game was the blocked punt. Then our defense made a stand (on the potential game-tying two-point conversion run) and the offense was able to run the clock out at the end of the game. I thought the kids played phenomenal.”

Anniston (5-5) was forced to forfeit two games, including its region win over Jacksonville, for the use of a player in violation of the AHSAA academic rule. The forfeit caused the top-seeded Bulldogs to drop to a four seed, putting them on a collision course with St. James in the first round.

“It’s definitely a great experience playing a team like that because they’re not a fourth-seeded team,” St. James senior Bradley Thomas said. “They’re a first-seeded team that got set back. It’s always a great game when you play great teams like that. You never want to play a team that’s below-par so it’s always a great time to beat a team like that.”

It was a game in which the Trojans fought valiantly to hold their own against an offensive line that averaged 286 pounds per man and a group of skill players who threatened to take over the game. Alabama commitment Antonio Kite had four receptions for 135 yards in the first 15 minutes of the game, setting up a score with a 38-yard reception from Kamron Sandlin and scoring on an 80-yard catch and run that tied the game at 14-14.

But Kite, a standout safety, injured his ankle minutes later on a Cosner Harrison run and played sparingly the rest of the game, never recording another tackle or making another catch.

His 80-yard reception came on the next play from scrimmage after teammate Jamarius Billingsley was jarred loose from the ball and Thomas scooped up the fumble and ran 81 yards to put the Trojans on top 14-6.

“It was just a great defensive play by whoever caused that fumble,” Thomas said, “and it’s just knowing where the ball is at the right time and trying to make a play in a big game.”

“He always does,” Perry said. “He’s going to come up with a big play all the time.”

But with the score knotted at 14-14 at the half, the Trojans needed to take the opening kickoff of the second half and establish their running game. Instead, St. James went three and out and Anniston overcame four penalties to march 66 yards in seven plays for a 20-14 lead. 

 The game, it seemed, was starting to slip away. But a determined St. James offense answered, with Harrison gaining six yards on a fourth-and-one carry at the Trojan 40, then 37 yards on the next play. Two plays later, K.J. Jackson hit Ethan Beard with a 23-yard pass in the right corner of the end zone, Jacob Huff added the extra point and St. James was back in front 21-20.

Three plays later, Malichi Deramus took the field for his first punt of the night. A swarm of players, led by Cooper Wright, blocked the punt and set up the Trojans at the Anniston 34. Five plays later, Jackson hit Clint Houser with a 33-yard pass over the middle and Jackson scored on the next play for a 28-20 lead.

“Coach Perry was telling us before the game turnovers were going to win the game, we just had to make more plays than they did,” Thomas said. 

Back came the Bulldogs, biting off huge chunks of yardage with every run, finally scoring on a 10-yard run by Billingsley in which he broke three tackles on the way to the end zone. Sandlin, who rushed for 109 yards on 15 carries, went at left guard for the game-tying conversion. 

Ariel July hit him and stopped momentum long enough for his teammates to drop the Anniston quarterback for no gain with 5:07 left.

“They shifted over and we worked on bumping the front all week,” Perry said. “We bumped in a good position and then we had to make a play. On the touchdown, we missed three tackles. On the two-point play, we didn’t miss a tackle at all. We gang-tackled that big ‘ole quarterback and were able to preserve the win.”   

The Trojans ran out the clock, converting a third and four with a keeper up the middle by Jackson and a third and six as Jackson rolled left from pressure, then flipped a pass a foot off the ground that was gathered in by Wright for a first down that sealed the win. 

After the game, Perry praised “our scout offensive line, who mimicked their big offensive line. Some of the things they were doing was tipping their hand to whether it was run or pass and our scout offensive line had to learn those maneuvers so we could call whether it was going to be a pass or a run. It was a total team effort.”

St. James (10-1) extended its winning streak to 10 games and posted its fourth 10-win season in the last six years with the victory. The Trojans will play host to Jackson (9-2) next Friday at Carlisle Field in the second round of the playoffs.

Perry, who earlier this season passed Robert Johnson as the school’s winningest coach, caught Johnson in another meaningful statistic on Friday with his fifth playoff victory at the school. The pair have combined for 10 of the 12 playoff victories ever posted by the school.