By Thomas Grant Jr.
Looking ahead to a season-ending home showdown is not in the plans for Brookland-Cayce.
Coming off a close call in a 41-35 overtime win over Dreher, the Bearcats are determined to take care of business Friday at winless Swansea.
A win would keep the Bearcats (6-2, 2-0) on track to play for the Region 5-3A title on Oct. 27 at home against undefeated Gilbert. The Indians play host to the Blue Devils on Friday.
“Every year, I think some back on our better years, there’s always one game or two that you go ‘We were lucky. We were lucky.’ And there are usually games you go ‘We should have won but, we weren’t lucky.’ So that’s the way it goes and we were fortunate to get out of there with a win and we’re not taking Swansea lightly. Swansea’s got some good players.”
The Tigers (0-8, 0-3) have dropped 14 straight games dating back to last season. They have been outscored 407-63 this season and are coming off a 49-7 loss to Lower Richland.
Looking back on last week, Charpia thought his team was “playing not to lose” after taking a 28-7 lead. Dreher rallied to tie the game at 28-28 and after the Bearcats regained the lead, tied the game in the final seconds of regulation.
“We got up 28-7 and we’re sitting around for the victory party to start,” Charpia said. “No coach ever thinks the game’s over. I knew better. I knew what type of players Dreher have. I know what type of coach (Corey) Jenkins is. I know that he’s one of those guys who played at the highest level. He knows what he’s doing and they had us in the perfect trap game.”
Charpia was referring to playing in the Sonic Friday Night Rivals Game of the Week which sees constant interruptions for long television timeouts. There were also the “questionable” penalties assessed on the Bearcats during the Blue Devils’ game-tying drive.
“Every time it seemed my group was going to put it away, here comes a big penalty,” Charpia said. “We can’t talk about that. We get in trouble, so we’ve got to clean it up on our end. It’s just so hard to clean up when you can’t find where it is where they’re saying. But that’s part of the game.”
Junior cornerback Isaiah Oree came up big on defense for the Bearcats. He had an interception return for a touchdown and picked off a pass on Dreher’s first possession in overtime to set up the game-winning score by Will Young.
Young finished with 227 rushing yards and four touchdowns. He has 19 touchdowns on the season and is 53 yards shy of 1,000 rushing yards.
“He’s come a long way,” said Charpia about Oree. “He’s never played football before. He’s a really good baseball player, basketball player. He decided to give it a shot because I coach baseball and his basketball coach coaches football Coach (Robert) Wells. We’ve actually got two corners, (Jordan) Boston and Oree, that we think are going to be big-time players because they both can run really fast. You can see they’re long and they’re super kids.”
Both the Brookland-Cayce and Airport football games can be heard on the Palmetto State Sports Network. The app is available to download.
S.C. PREP FOOTBALL MEDIA CLASS 3A RANKINGS
1.Daniel (18) (8-0)
2. Belton-Honea Path (2) (8-0)
3. Dillon (7-1)
4. Gilbert (8-0)
5. Chapman (7-1)
6. Crestwood (7-1)
7. Chester (7-1)
8. Broome (7-1)
9. Philip Simmons (8-0)
10. Camden (6-2)
Others receiving votes: Clinton, Pendleton, Manning
Photo by Goflashwin.com – Brookland-Cayce’s Will Young
