Muskogee beats Edmond Memorial on last play in final scrimmage

SAPULPA—The Muskogee defense, which has drawn rave reviews from coaches all throughout summer practices and in last week’s scrimmage against Putnam City, made an even bigger statement Friday night at George Collins Stadium. With time running down in a scoreless affair, linebacker Kaleb Biglow, who had a couple of dropped passes on offense, picked off an Edmond Memorial pass at their 20-yard line and returned it to the Bulldogs 3-yard line, where quarterback Ty Williams ran it in for the lone score of the scrimmage with one-tenth of a second left. Gage Foreman added the extra point, and, for the second straight week, the Roughers were victorious 7-0. The teams played two 15-minute quarters with a continuous running clock, stopping only for timeouts and kicking downs, making it difficult to obtain much momentum, according to Rougher head coach Rafe Watkins. “It’s so hard with a running clock to get much going,” Watkins said. “I think we only had five offensive plays in the first half because they had one drive that ate up time. I didn’t think we competed very hard on either side of the ball in the first half. We weren’t coming off the ball like we did last week, although part of that is that Memorial is a better team than Putnam City was. We challenged them at intermission and they responded much better in the second half.” But a familiar problem cropped up again for Muskogee as they were plagued by penalties, which were a big stumbling block most of last season. The Roughers collected seven penalties for 70 yards on the night, one of them wiping out a 50-yard touchdown pass. “That’s absolutely horrendous to have that many penalties in a short time with a running clock,” Watkins said. “It really shows a lack of discipline and I told the kids that opponents will use that against us if we don’t correct it now.” Watkins did settle the quarterback question for Muskogee as the sophomore Williams called signals for the entire scrimmage. But that doesn’t mean that junior Jordan Bradley will be staying on the sidelines. “We watched them both during our little round-robin scrimmages tonight and felt like whoever did better would be the quarterback for the main scrimmage, so we went with Ty,” Watkins said. “But Jordan is a good enough and smart player that he’ll be on the field somewhere such as wide receiver, where he played some tonight.” Both offenses struggled during the scrimmage, with Muskogee gaining a total of 61 yards, half that coming on nifty 30-yard scamper by Williams on an end-around. The young sophomore was just 3-for-9 passing, though several of those incompletions were drops. The Rougher defense held the Bulldogs to just 25 yards of total offense on the night. The final preparations will be put in place this week by the Roughers, who start the 2018 season next Friday night at home against McAlester at 7 p.m.

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Edmond Memorial High School Athletics

MUSKOGEE BEATS EDMOND MEMORIAL ON LAST PLAY IN FINAL SCRIMMAGE

NICK HAMPTON

Muskogee Phoenix | 8/26/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: Edmond Memorial Athletics