Defense, late scores secure Russellville’s ‘ugly’ 20-7 region win over East Limestone

It wasn’t the prettiest victory the Golden Tigers have ever earned, but it was a win in the end—and that’s what matters.

The Russellville High School varsity football team improved to 2-2 overall and 2-0 in Class 5A Region 7 play after defeating the visiting East Limestone Indians (0-3, 0-1) 20-7 at Golden Tiger Stadium on Friday night. 

Two early touchdowns were about the only highlights of the game until late when Russellville was able to get a go-ahead touchdown and then a pick-six as time expired to win by two scores.

“Before watching the film, in our minds, it was an ugly win. But a win is a win—you can’t take them for granted and we never will,” second-year Russellville head coach Dustin Goodwin told the Franklin Free Press after the game.

Russellville elected to start the game on offense, but didn’t need its offensive unit to open the scoring. On the opening kickoff, senior Ben Pounders received the ball at around the 12-yard line and took it to the house—an 88-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to make it 7-0 Golden Tigers in the blink of an eye. It was a perfect start for the hosts.

Russellville’s fast start wasn’t an indicator of how the rest of the game would play out, unfortunately for the Golden Tigers. 

The visitors, on their first offensive possession, answered the Golden Tigers’ special teams score with a methodical 10-play, 71-yard touchdown drive capped by a four-yard touchdown rush by junior running back Keeon Miller to make it 7-7 with 7:27 to go in the first quarter.

The strange thing about East Limestone’s touchdown wasn’t who scored it, but how the Indians drove down to score. ELHS starting quarterback Cade Parham went down with an injury just a few plays into the game and never returned to the field. That left Miller taking a majority of the snaps in a kind of heavy package, Wildcat formation—and that’s pretty much the offense East Limestone ran for the remainder of the game.

“Unfortunately for East Limestone, their quarterback got knocked out early, but they’ve got three really good running backs and they blocked well up front,” Goodwin said. “They ran the ball and they were able to eat up a lot of clock.

“It definitely ended up being a different look than we were expecting. Credit to (East Limestone’s) staff. I’m sure it was a short-yardage package that they had to lean on because they didn’t have another (quarterback) that could take 100 percent of the snaps. But like I said, they’ve got three good backs,” Goodwin added. “We worked all week on things we had seen and some things that we didn’t defensively, but we definitely didn’t work on all of that!”

The different look from the Indians’ offense may have caught the Golden Tigers a bit off guard—the visitors were able to move the ball down the field fairly well and picked up first downs, especially in the first half—but Russellville’s defense, as it has all season, has come up big when it matters most and has been stingy in the redzone.

“I thought our staff did a good job of adjusting, coming up with assignments, and creating a good plan to stop it. Ultimately our kids did a good job stopping it, keeping them to only seven points,” Goodwin said.

“They kept us in the ball game,” he added.

East Limestone’s first touchdown would be its last of the game; it also turned out to be the last score for either team for a long time.

Russellville’s offense, though not always able to consistently finish drives in the endzone, was consistently able to move the ball down the field on its first three opponents this campaign. That wasn’t the case Friday night. The Golden Tiger offense was stagnant, especially in the first half, and could not move the chains.

“It’s hard to say without watching the film,” Goodwin said when asked why the offense wasn’t clicking Friday night.

“But the offensive side of the ball is a unit where all 11 have to collectively execute their assignments at a high level. It just seemed like we were missing on something—not just one specific area but we couldn’t string plays together. We had plays where we weren’t all collectively doing the right thing,” he said. “Unfortunately, that tends to happen sometimes, but getting nine snaps in the first half and not getting first downs is definitely not what we expect of ourselves.”

Tied up 7-7 through the second and third quarters, Russellville was finally able to find the endzone again with 8:34 to go in the game. A 10-yard Tarus Davis rushing touchdown made it 14-7.

“We were able to string a few things together and run the ball and score in the second half, but we definitely need to start faster and not wait until the second half to start moving the football,” Goodwin said.

With over eight minutes remaining, East Limestone still had an opportunity to go down and potentially tie the game up, but Russellville’s defense came up with a deflected pass—one of the just handful of passes the Indians attempted—that ended up in the arms of Pounders for an interception.

Getting the ball back with just a few minutes left to play, the Russellville offense had an opportunity to put the game on ice. But there was still a little bit more drama to squeeze out of this one.

After driving the ball down inside the ELHS five-yard line, Russellville fumbled and the ball was recovered by the Indians in the final minute of the game. With no timeouts and the starting quarterback on the sideline, the Indians put in a sophomore quarterback who attempted a long heave downfield on the final play. That ball was intercepted by sophomore Darron Jones, who ran it back around 50 yards for the touchdown as time expired.

‘Good’ win or ‘ugly’ win, it doesn’t matter when it comes to region play. There’s no asterisk delineating the aesthetics in the record book. Goodwin said his team will take Friday’s ugly W and learn from it as they head into a three-game road stretch, starting at region foe Ardmore next week.

“Our kids know that we’ve got to play better to win consistently, but the good news is…we know we can win an ugly game,” he said. “We’ve got to regroup next week and focus on a team (Ardmore) that I think is going to be really good. But we’re where we want to be, 2-0 in the region, and we’ll get to work next week to try to win a third one.”

Russellville senior Houston Askew makes a leaping catch during pre-game warmups September 12.