Scott Pierson referred to them as ‘freak plays’ – a 93-yard kickoff return, followed by a 98-yard scoop-and-score put West Jones behind early last Friday night in the first round of the MHSAA Class 5A playoffs. By the half, Stone, who beat West Jones last year in the first round, seemingly had the formula to do it again.
Despite trailing Stone 20-3 with 10 minutes left in the second quarter, Pierson never felt out of the game.
“It was a situation where we came in at halftime with 258 yards of offense and [Stone] had 110,” said the West Jones head football coach. “We felt like that as bad as it was, I never really felt we were out of the game.”
Pierson was right. A 66-yard touchdown pass to Tajrick Randolph and a five-yard rush by sophomore quarterback Alan Follis put West Jones within one, 23-22, of the Stone Tomcats with 6:22 remaining in the game. Follis finished with 359 yards of offense, 228 through the air and 131 on the ground.
“We haven’t run Follis all year for a variety of reasons,” said Pierson. “One, he’s a sophomore and hasn’t had enough time to be in the weight room to take the pounding. So we choose not to run him because he wouldn’t have made it through the year. But with a loser go home atmosphere it’s quite obvious that’s the time you have to run him.”
Follis averaged 7.3 yards a rush on 18 carries and 20.7 yards a pass on 11 completions.
“To be honest, as well as he played, he could have played a lot better if he could have had a dry ball,” added Pierson. “That hampered his ability to complete passes. He usually completes about 65 percent of his passes but [last Friday night] he was at 50 percent because he couldn’t grip the ball as well.”
“In the first half we got down in the red zone a couple of times and couldn’t capitalize,” said Follis. “In the second half, we did a better job of that. We realized at the half that if we didn’t come out and play a better game altogether, there would be no game this week.”
Still trailing Stone late into the fourth quarter, senior kicker and Ole Miss commit Walker Thompson played his part in the West Jones win. With 3:32 remaining, Thompson split the uprights from 35-yards out. It turned out to the game-winning field goal.
“At halftime Coach Pierson told us there were two things we could do,” said Thompson. “We could lay down and be done with the season or stand up like men and go out and win the game.”
Thompson, of course, helped with the latter. Even after missing an extra point three minutes earlier.
“After the missed extra point, he came over to me and told me the ball wasn’t placed on the tee,” Pierson recalled. “I told him I understood and we had a conversation about that.
“I looked at him and said, ‘son that doesn’t matter because you’re going to get a chance to kick a field goal to win the game.’ He looked at me funny, and I said, ‘no son, you are.’ And sure enough, the opportunity came.”
Follis and Thompson’s efforts to keep West Jones’ season alive earns them the honor of this week’s Sports601 Powerade Co-Players of the Week award.
West Jones travels to Hattiesburg this Friday night to take the Tigers at D.I. Patrick Stadium. Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m.
