CURD TO NICKELL PASS PLAYS

PROVIDE 4TH QURTER OFFENSE

BY: DAVID PATRICK

mORGAN COUNTY avoided an embarrasing shutout to west carter with three fourth touchdowns as the cougars fell on the short end of a 46 – 22 final.

jake purnell’s team trailed 39 – 0 heading into the final period before executing a halfback option, 47 yard scoring pass from jarred curd to joel nickell.

after an on-side kick, curd and nickell hooked up again with a nine yard scoring pass. a two-point conversion run by brandon ward completed the scoring drive.

curd and nickell also set up morgan’s final SCORE with a 67 yard pass play to put the ball inside the COMET five yard line. curd scored the touchdown on a two yard quarterback sneak. cameron dunn was on the receiving end of a curd pass for the two-point conversion.

the curd to nickell connectION accounted for 139 of the team’s SEASON-HIGH 189 yards passing. curd completed six passes—with four going to nickell.

of course, the cougars dug a whole they couldn’t get out of thru three quarters. west carter scored on touchdown runs of 14 and five yards, respectively, by timmy bradley. harrison bond added a pair of scoring runs of his own.

purnell blamed poor cougar defense—most notably tackling—for the comets’ biggest offensive performance of the season.

“if we were a two-hand touch football team, we’d be state champs,” said purnell in reference to morgan’s arm tackling. “we probably missed 20 tackles in the backfield due to a lack of strength and confidence.”

the cougars gave up just one scoring play in the second half. purnell attributed that defensive mistake to “kids being out of position”.

offensively, jacob flack led the cougars with 77 yards on 18 carries. ryan flannery and brandon ward finished with a combined 10 carries for 28 yards.

morgan county will host shelby valley (4 – 3) friday night at herdman field.