Tre Rogers gets the game winner from 1 yard out
It took two days, but Hartsville got its perfect regular season mark. The Red Foxes came from 17 points down in the second half to top the Darlington Falcons 33-30 on Saturday afternoon at the Falcon's Nest. Darlington had a 22-13 lead on Friday night, before a power outage forced the game to resume on Saturday at noon.
WATCH Friday Highlights of first half between Darlington and Hartsville on the Chevy End Zone
Hartsville took the opening kickoff in the third quarter and drove it into Falcons territory, but the Darlington defense was able to get a stop at the 23 yard line. Darvia Dubose engineered another scoring drive finding Cayland Howard on a short pass. He was able to take off and find the end zone on a 30 yard scoring play. Darlington added a two point conversion to take a 30-17 lead.
The Red Foxes did not panic and turned to its vaunted running attack. Trey Samuel, Dominic Robinson, Tre Rogers and Mike Williams all took turns carrying the ball. Robinson's 4 yard TD run made it a 30-21 game at the end of three quarters. In the 4th, Red Foxes quarterback Shaq Johnson followed the offensive line's push to score from two yards out on 4th and 1 to make it a 30-27 game. The key play of the game came shortly after that as Dubose was picked off by Dontez Rogers. Hartsville got the ball back with just over six minutes to try and take the lead. On 4th and goal from the 1, Rogers plunged over the pile to give the Red Foxes the 33-30 advantage.
Dubose was able to convert two fourth downs in the final two minutes to get the Falcons to the Hartsville 25, but a pair of passes in the end zone were knocked down as the Red Foxes completed a perfect regular season. Darlington missed out on the playoffs, but proved that they were no doubt a post-season quality club finishing the year 4-6.
Hartsville's playoff seeding and matchup had no bearing on the results of the regular season finale. Southside comes to Kelleytown Staduim for the first round of the 3A playoffs next Friday night.
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