A 34-7 halftime deficit was too much to overcome for the Faith Warriors as the team concluded its inaugural season Friday in the Muscogee County School District, suffering a 40-27 loss to Marshall/Baker.
Faith finished 0-6 on the season, but may have saved its best performance for the second half of the game against Marshall/Baker.
Head coach Lee Obie said the loss came down to an inconsistent first half and failure to capitalize on missed red zone opportunities in the third quarter.
“We hadn’t been in the red zone much, but when we get there we need to push it in,” Obie said.
“I know for a fact that if we had played the first half the way we did the second, we would have probably won the game or made it a very close game.”
Brandon McDuffie turned things around for Faith after he recovered a fumble by Marshall/Baker and returned it for a touchdown.
The Warriors offense clicked in the fourth quarter. Austin Screeton hit Elliott Burbel for a 60-yard strike to cut the lead with 6:27 remaining.
Determined to get the Warriors one last touchdown, Screeton threw to T.J. Jones in stride for a 17-yard score with 7 seconds remaining.
Screeton had his best outing of the season, racking up 96 yards on the ground and another 149 in the air to go along with three total touchdowns.
“I couldn’t have picked anybody better to be my quarterback,” Obie said. “He put it all out there and took more hits than probably any other quarterback in the district.”
Screeton ran for a 36-yard touchdown off a designed quarterback run in the first quarter to open the game for Faith.
However, the Warriors defense proved powerless to stop the running attack of Marshall/Baker in the first half. Marshall/Baker scored 34 unanswered points and accounted for four rushing touchdowns in the first half, a rout that began with an 85-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
“They lost confidence,” Obie said about his defense, “Once the other team scores, they lose confidence and look at it as a defeat.”
But the defense came out renewed in the second half as well, allowing just six points and 68 yards on the ground.
Obie said Faith transitioned from a run-first offense to a pass-first about midway through the season and scored 65 points in its final three games, compared to just eight in its first three.
“When they scored that first touchdown, they acquired a taste to score,” he said. “That’s all it took … and they’ve progressed more since that touchdown.”
Obie said he will work with a fresh batch of players because the majority of his team will move on to high school or PCS before next season and will not return.
“I’m losing 90 percent of the team this year,” he said.
