ROCKINGHAM - Going into Friday’s Week 3 matchup on the road at Raider Stadium, the Pine Forest High School football team hadn’t allowed an opponent to score in six of the eight quarters played this season.
Dating back to their season opener on Aug. 17, the Trojans’ defense managed to keep Purnell Swett and Concord high schools out of the end zone entirely, save for two bookend scores by the Rams in the first and fourth quarters. In that span, Pine Forest had also outscored the two teams 60-14.
But all of that changed Friday night, when head coach William Sochovka’s team met the smashmouth Raider defense, which stunted the red-hot Trojan scoring game by shutting them out 28-0, and returning No. 5 Richmond (2-1) to the win column.
Head coach Bryan Till’s defense held Pine Forest to a staggeringly low 96 total yards of offense, the lowest amount of yards allowed by Richmond since giving up just 82 yards against Douglas Byrd High School on Sept. 1, 2016, in a 62-0 bashing. The Trojans mustered just 65 rushing yards and 31 passing yards on 55 offensive snaps.
It was also Richmond’s first shutout since Sept. 16, 2016, when the Raiders silenced South View High School 21-0, and Friday’s win was the 108th recorded shutout in program history.
“I’m really proud of our defensive guys tonight,” Till said in a postgame interview. “I felt like we had a good game plan and we executed well. We did give up a lot of yards on the first drive (of 17 plays), and it would have been easy for our guys to fold, but they didn’t.
“After that drive, I told the guys ‘that’s it -- that’s all they get,’” he continued. “And we came right back, and our guys really figured it out and knew the effort it would take.”
A week after falling just short to the No. 1 4A program in the state, Wake Forest High School, in a shootout that saw Richmond nearly quadruple the Cougars’ points per game allowed, Till’s team responded with a convincing non-conference win that handed the Trojans (2-1) their first loss of the season.
In a game that was a battle in the trenches early and saw only one touchdown by the Raiders in the first half, it would be the tandem of sophomore quarterback Caleb Hood and junior tailback Jaheim Covington that would lift the Raiders over the Trojans. Each player had two rushing touchdowns on the night, as the Richmond running game found its stride in the late-going after struggling against Wake Forest last week.
Friday’s game was similar to last year’s 26-point road win (40-14) against the Trojans in terms of Richmond controlling the game’s tempo. Offensive coordinator Brad Denson’s crew racked up just 247 yards total yards of offense, a season low, but it was more than enough.
Hood was just 4-for-9 through the air for 59 yards, and 52 of those came on a catch-and-run to sophomore receiver Jakolbe Baldwin during the first scoring drive. The Raider running attack, which was without junior Lacyrus Ellerbe (hip injury), carried the weight of Richmond’s offense Friday.
Five different players collected positive yardage for the Raiders, for a total of 188 yards, with Covington grinding it out for 136 yards on 14 carries (9.71 yards per attempt). Hood scrambled for 28 more on 11 carries. The four combined rushing touchdowns by Covington and Hood made it the 340th time the Raiders have scored at least that many total scores in their 595 all-time games.
The Trojans won the toss and deferred to the second half, giving Richmond a chance to strike early. But that wouldn’t be the case as a strong defensive effort by Pine Forest forced the Raiders to call on senior punter Kyle Goodwin to kick the ball away during the first three possessions after collecting just 14 yards of total offense.
Likewise, the Trojans turned the ball over on downs during their first three tries, as they failed to convert on situations of 4th-and-5, 4th-and-10 and 4th-and-14, respectively. Seniors AJ Isaac and Divine Nicholson sacked Pine Forest quarterback Richard McEachern (one of six Richmond sacks on the night) to end the opening 17-play drive, while defended passes by junior safety Omarion Brown and senior DJ Stephens stopped the next two Pine Forest drives.
With the first-half clock ticking away and little to show, Hood led the Raiders on a five-play, 64-yard scoring drive that got started with his 52-yard hookup with Baldwin across the middle of the field. That play gained a first down at the Pine Forest 15-yard line, and soon after Covington split the tackles to his right to muscle his way in from 14 yards out. A Trevor Moss PAT put the Raiders up 7-0 with 2:09 left before the break.
The score would hold going into halftime.
Jaheim Covington (33) celebrates with Gavin Russell (42) following his first touchdown.
To start the third quarter, the Trojans punted the ball on a three-and-out for the first of five times in their final seven drives (two other 3-and-outs). In the span of those drives, Nicholson, fellow seniors Jonathan Jones and Rasheed Patrick and company limited Pine Forest to -6 yards of total offense.
After getting the ball in good field position at the Trojans’ 41-yard line to start its first drive of the half resulted in an eventual Goodwin punt, Richmond put together three straight possessions that found the ball cross the goal line.
The first was an 11-play, 42-yard march that started and ended with Hood. On 3rd-and-12, Hood rolled out to his right and cut back across the field for a pick up of 10 yards, which was then converted on 4th-and-2 by Covington. Moments later, following a pass interference penalty on Jordan Gladney against Dalton Stroman in the end zone, Hood blistered his way through a barrage of bodies for a two-yard score to put Richmond up 14-0 to end the third quarter.
After Nicholson and Jones combined to sack Jaden Jones and force a punt on the ensuing Pine Forest possession, Hood wasted no time in getting back into the end zone. Taking over at his own 46-yard line, runs of 18 yards (Covington) and back-to-back seven-yard gains by senior Bobby Terry, coupled with three defensive penalties, set up a 17-yard dash by Hood.
On the touchdown run, Hood scampered out to his left before cutting back toward the middle of the field to go in untouched to make it 21-0 with 8:34 to go in regulation.
Pine Forest lost any momentum it had when Jaden Jones was sacked again and was forced to punt on another 3-and-out, the Trojans’ fifth such scenario on the night. On the first play from scrimmage, Covington put the proverbial nail in the coffin with a 45-yard blast down the right sideline for the final score of the ball game.
“I think we wore them down,” Till said of the second-half scoring turnaround. “We did some more stuff on the perimeter, and tried to trap those guys a little better in the second half. The continual effort and short field position helped us out on offense. Our kids are tough -- and they grinded it out.”
Jakolbe Baldwin (4) catches the ball around midfield on his 52-yard reception from Caleb Hood in the second quarter.
The Raider defense wasn’t done with its assault, as on the second play of the next drive, Jaden Jones fumbled on the snap. Nicholson, who is having a productive senior season, scooped up the loose ball at the 19-yard line and trickled down to the one-yard line, nearly scoring, before being brought down. It was Richmond’s first recovered turnover of the season.
“Oh, man -- it killed me,” Nicholson said with a smile after the game. “I was so happy and I thought I had (the touchdown). I tried to reach for it, but their guy got me.
“We really tried to stop their guys early and look at their formations,” the senior defensive end continued. “Our defensive line tries to come off the ball and attack hard. We’ve all been playing together since ninth grade, and we have that chemistry and a good bond. We work hard and it was good to get a win tonight.”
Till sent in several second-team players, including backup junior quarterback Noah Altman and backup junior running back Travis Short, to close out the game.
“The thing we can take from tonight is the effort it takes to play four really good quarters to get a shutout,” Till noted. “You can’t have a play where you take a play off. It takes a whole team effort of rotating guys in and out to make it work.
“Divine (Nicholson) and Jonathan (Jones) are great players,” he concluded. “They showed great effort tonight and we moved them around a lot. They were able to use their stunts to find holes and get into the backfield. It would have been phenomenal for Divine to get that touchdown.”
Richmond will hope to stay in the win column next Friday on the road at David W. Butler High School (1-1, Matthews, N.C.), and look to end a roller coaster record during the first four weeks of the past two seasons. Through Week 4 last year, the Raiders were 2-2, after mirroring the first three games and dropping a heartbreaking 27-21 contest to the Bulldogs.
So far this season, Butler has been up and down as well, drubbing Scotland High School 47-19 to open the season, before falling to a tough Mallard Creek High School squad 36-28 last week. The Bulldogs took their bye week Friday, and will have had two weeks to prepare for Till and company.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Butler. Follow @ROSports_ on Twitter for live in-game updates.
