Column: Central's latest playoff loss hardest to come to terms with

The Central Red Devils have suffered some tough playoff losses at the hands of McGill-Toolen, but Friday night's overtime heartbreaker was the most disheartening of the three.

Central came so close, but close wasn't enough in a 27-26 overtime loss to the Yellow Jackets. The thump of the blocked extra point in the extra session signaled the end of Central's run as Class 7A's No. 1 team and the premature start of the offseason.

Central head coach Jamey DuBose was understandably frustrated after the Red Devils were literally one-upped by the Yellow Jackets.

“It’s my fault,” DuBose said. “I’ve got to figure it out. You can’t get here (to the semifinals) three years in a row and come up short. Going undefeated and all those type things are great, but we’re here to win championships at Central. It’s what we’ve got to have, and it’s what they deserve.”

Part of why this loss is and will be so hard to get over is the amount of talent leaving Central and the way those seniors played Friday.

Gone is Jamaar Spivey, whose 75-yard run in the fourth quarter was Central's biggest play and set up Peter Parrish's go-ahead 4-yard touchdown play. Senior defensive lineman Tyler Moore also played impressively in his final game, which included a goal-line tackle on fourth down in the third quarter that prevented the Yellow Jackets from going up by 10.

And you simply cannot name Central seniors without mentioning five-star wide receiver Justyn Ross, who had a big third-down conversion late in the fourth quarter and caught the could-have-been tying touchdown in overtime.

DuBose knows as well as any how much work the senior class put forth in search of the Red Devils' first state championship since 1993.

“It hurts,” DuBose said. “It doesn’t matter what the score says — these guys fought all year and they did everything I asked them to do. I’m proud of every one of them. I’m proud of what they’ve done for this community and what they’ve done for this school.”

Hindsight will likely linger within the Central fanbase from now until next season.

Should DuBose have gone for two and the win, especially given how shaky the kicking game was? Why didn't the offense set the ball in the middle of the field for the fourth-quarter kick, as opposed to the right hash mark? Would it have been a surer bet for Parrish throw to Ross in those final seconds of regulation, as he did in overtime?

All three options are cases of hindsight that were debatable at the time. Of course, these are still the types of questions that get repeated when a team's best title shot falls short.

“We’re right back where we were last season,” DuBose said. “We’ll have to go back in the offseason and figure this thing out.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2017 at 12:51 PM with the headline "Column: Central's latest playoff loss hardest to come to terms with."