“It was great,” said McGohan, who has Division I scholarship offers from UAB and Charlotte. “We thought we were going to win. Nobody else did, obviously.”
McGohan finished the game with seven catches for 152 yards. Barry completed 16 of 28 passes for 254 yards.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Miamisburg spoiled Springfield’s bid for its first undefeated regular season since the new high school opened in 2008. The Wildcats rose to No. 2 in the state poll after beating Centerville 44-7 last week. This was only their third regular-season loss in the last three seasons, and their only postseason losses in 2019 and 2020 came in the state semifinals.
“It’s a wake-up call,” Springfield coach Maurice Douglass said. “The last three weeks in practice, the focus wasn’t as good — last week and especially this week when we had two days that we missed because we were out of school Monday and Friday. But yes, we can turn it around because the last two years we made it to Week 14 and we lost one game. Now the humbling comes later as opposed to early.”
The loss also kept Springfield from clinching a share of the Greater Western Ohio Conference championship. Instead, it fell into a first-place tie with Centerville (7-2, 5-1), which beat Fairmont 28-21 in overtime, and Wayne (7-2, 5-1), which beat Springboro 28-24, with one game to play.
Springfield plays at home against Northmont (1-5, 3-5) in Week 10. Centerville plays at Wayne.
Miamisburg (6-3, 3-3) is tied for fourth place with Springboro. Miamisburg plays at Springboro in the final week of the regular season.
The Vikings scored one more point against Springfield than the previous five teams Springfield played — Wayne, Beavercreek, Fairmont, Springboro and Centerville — combined to score. The decision to go for the final two points was an easy one for coach Lance Schneider.
“i didn’t even hesitate,” Schneider said. “We were pretty gassed, especially on defense. They’re so good. Trying to keep them out 20 yards at a time is a tough task, so I just figured, ‘What the heck, let’s do it.’”
Davis took a pitch from Conner Smith, who received the handoff from Berry, and dove to the corner of the end zone, just beating Springfield defenders.
“I told Conner you’re not allowed to get tackled,” Schneider said. “You score or you pitch it to Christian.”
Springfield grabbed the early momentum with a 7-yard touchdown run by Te’Sean Smoot in the first minute of the second quarter. It was Smoot’s 12th touchdown run of the season.
Miamisburg tied the game with 18 seconds remaining in the first half on a 21-yard touchdown pass from Barry to McGohan, who caught the ball as he was falling out of bounds and touched his toes in the end zone before doing so.
Barry then threw a 77-yard touchdown pass to McGohan with 7:30 left in the third quarter to give Miamisburg a 14-7 lead. On that play, McGohan broke a tackle at midfield and raced alone to the end zone.
“Jackson’s a great kid,” Schneider said. “He’s a great player. I’m so happy for him.”
Springfield took advantage of a roughing-the-punter penalty, which extended a drive, to tie the game on a 5-yard touchdown run by Ramon Browder with 2:29 left in the third.
After a short punt by Miamisburg, Springfield scored quickly on a 22-yard touchdown run by Browder with 15 seconds left in the third. The Wildcats led 21-14.
Springfield got a fourth-down stop with around seven minutes to play and maintained its lead until the final seconds when Miamisburg drove for the winning score. Barry’s touchdown pass to McGohan came on 3rd-and-goal from the 8-yard line.
“We practice that all the time,” McGohan said. “It works all the time in practice. I knew we were going to do that play, and it worked, so it was great.”
Schneider made his team believe it could beat Springfield by reminding them last season Northmont handed Springfield its only loss, 38-35, and then narrowly beat Miamisburg 40-35 in overtime the following week. He also mentioned Alabama’s loss to Texas A&M last weekend.
“I said you’ve just got to believe,” Schneider said. “We thought we had a good plan. We know we’ve got good players. It’s just one of those things. Every game this year we’ve had opportunities and then finally we made some plays to win the game.”
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