The Oak Grove Warriors captured the 2020 MHSAA 6A Football Championship during a wild and dramatic finish Friday night at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson.
And, what a finish it was.
A close game throughout never separated by more than a touchdown, Oak Grove head coach Drew Causey's Warriors found themselves trailing 28-21 with 3:52 left in the contest. After struggling offensively in the second half and just following a late Oxford touchdown drive, Oak Grove went to work. Junior quarterback Kabe Barnett and the Warriors offense drove quickly 80 yards in the final three minutes. During the drive, Barnett completed two passes to Jordan Coleman and two to Raheem Fairly to set up Oak Grove at the Chargers' 18-yard line. Tyrell Pollard scooted off an 8-yard run to advance the Warriors to the 10-yard line. Oxford's defense then stiffened, and with Oak Grove facing a fourth-and-two from the 10 with only 14.3 seconds remaining, Barnett dropped to pass, found a wide opening in the defensive front and secondary, and simply pulled the football down and split the Chargers defense for a touchdown to close the gap to one.
“I saw everybody backed up except for one, and I knew if I could make him miss I could score,” Barnett said after the game. “I just knew on that last drive we could get into the endzone.”
The excitement and anticipation didn't stop there.
Causey put everything on the table with 7.2 seconds remaining in the championship game following the late touchdown, and immediately sent his offense back onto the field for the win. After three consecutive timeouts were called before the 2-point attempt snap, two by Oxford, Barnett rolled, looked backside, and threw a strike to Trayvon Moore in the left corner of the endzone. Following the kickoff and an Oxford “toss-it-around” play that in due course was fumbled and recovered by Oak Grove, the Warriors celebrated its 29-28 victory.
Causey said he had already made his decision about the 2-point try minutes before the Warriors even scored the touchdown to trim Oxford's lead to one. He stuck with his commitment on a play he recalled his team has most likely not run at all in a game this season, and it paid off.
“When we got the ball the first thing I told our offensive coach is if we score, we are going for the win,” he explained just after the game.
“It worked. We knew what we wanted to do, and that's a play that we've run probably a thousand times this year at practice, but I don't think we've actually run it all during the season. It's just a play we practice every single day two or three times, and it's kind of like [we would use it] just whenever we felt like we needed it, and we went to it tonight.”
Barnett, who finished the game 21-of-30 through the air for 200 yards and with two rushing touchdowns on 38 total yards, said he felt comfortable with the offense when his head coach sent him back onto the turf for the win.
“I just knew that 'Tray' was going to be open on the backside when I rolled out to the right, because I knew they were going to try to stop Tyrell [Pollard] from catching the pass,” he mentioned.
“It feels great to be a champion.”
With the game on the line, Moore said he knew exactly what he couldn't do and what he had to do on the 2-point venture.
“I knew I couldn't drop it. I knew I really had to catch it. There was nothing else to do but catch it, because if I'd have dropped it, it would have been on me,” he explained with a huge smile on his face. “I didn't get any catches the whole game, so I knew that was the time to put us on top. It feels great.”
Oak Grove jumped out quick in the game, after forcing Oxford to punt quickly on the opening series. The Warriors drove 61 yards on its first offensive possession, and running back Courtland Harris capped the drive with an 8-yard touchdown run with 9:40 left in the first to put Oak Grove in front, 7-0, following the extra point kick.
Oxford bounced back following a bad exchange on an Oak Grove handoff that forced a punt late in the first quarter. The Chargers marched the field on the ground and through the air, and quarterback Michael Harvey eventually connected with Kortlen Wilfawn on a 16-yard touchdown pass to tie the game, 7-7, with 1:33 remaining in the first quarter.
Oak Grove's Barnett and Harris ran hard in the second quarter during a drive that began on the Warriors' 25-yard line. Following a pass completion that landed the Warriors at its own 36-yard line, Barnett ripped off two rushes to Oxford's 43-yard line. Harris romped off four runs to the 8-yard line, and Barnett polished the offensive series with an 8-yard touchdown run to cushion Oak Grove's lead, 14-7, with 9:10 left in the second quarter.
Later in the second quarter, after swapping punts, Oxford quickly got back into the game. The Chargers drove 64 yards, and running back Omar Howell eventually rambled 6 yards for a touchdown to knot the game, 14-14, with 3:06 left in the first half.
Oxford, with good field position at its own 45, had a chance to put up points late in the first half, but Oak Grove's Braxton Miller dropped Harvey on a sack, causing him to leave the game for a short time. On his first snap under center for the Chargers, Tripp Maxwell was picked off by Oak Grove's Dontavious Howard with just over 12 seconds remaining in the first half, which soon after sent the two teams into the halftime locker rooms with a stalemate.
Oak Grove opened the second half on offense, but fumbled the football away to the Chargers on a Barnett misque. Oxford then returned a gift with a fumble of its own with 6:47 remaining in the third, but the Warriors in several plays gave the ball back to the Chargers with another Barnett fumble that Oxford recovered at Oak Grove's 41-yard line. The Chargers, from that point, seemed in control of the game. Harvey connected with Trynten Brannon on a pass that moved Oxford to Oak Grove's 7-yard line. He then placed a perfect pass to DK Johnson to hand the Chargers a 21-14 lead with 3:02 left in the third.
Oak Grove continued having problems moving the football in the third and later in the fourth, but the Warriors defense did its job in hampering Oxford's offense as well. With 6:15 left in the game, Oak Grove's defense stepped up even bigger when Jaylon Aborom intercepted Harvey and returned the pick 15-yards for a touchdown that tied the game again, 21-21, after Michael Owens barely squeezed the extra point through the uprights.
“Our defense … when we needed a stop, they stepped up huge on a fourth and less than one probably, and just did an unbelievable job. That kind of ignited us, and with Jaylon Aborom getting a pick-6 right there to kind of really get it kick-started for us, I'm just extremely proud of our kids and our coaches,” Causey said.
Oxford did bounce back within only minutes when Harvey targeted Alec Vaughn on a 13-yard touchdown pass to complete a 64-yard drive that handed the Chargers a 28-21 lead with 3:52 left in the game.
That score didn't stand though.
The Warriors later stunned the Chargers with the final seconds touchdown and 2-point conversion to claim the title, which handed Oak Grove its second football championship – the first in 2013.
Causey couldn't find words following the game to describe how he felt about his team's win.
“Words can't describe how it feels,” he explained. “I will probably think about it a little bit more later on, but right now I'm kind of numb.”
The Warriors completed the game with 307 total yards (200 passing), and the Chargers had 303 (257 passing - Harvey) in the hard-fought and very close game.
Oak Grove finished the season with a perfect 13-0 record and a gold ball.
Oxford finished 12-1.
