JC drops 6th straight

The Patriots put the first points on the board Friday night.

They trailed by just one with two minutes remaining in the game.

But a play here and a play there left them on the wrong end of the score for the sixth consecutive week.

The Greenville Green Wave sealed the game late, getting an interception that led to a touchdown and 2-point conversion for a nine-point lead. Another interception sealed the fate of the Jay County High School football team in a 28-19 defeat.

JCHS coach Shane Hill said he was proud of his team, despite the final tally, for continuing to fight.

"I'm very proud of the kids," he said. "It's very easy to cash your chips in when you're in the situation that we're in.

"Underclassmen all the way up to seniors said, 'We want to come out tonight and perform well, we want to give ourselves a chance to win ...' I think we did that."

A key defensive stop gave the Patriots (2-7) a chance in the closing minutes, but the Greenville defense didn't take long to answer back.

The Green Wave (2-6), which had lost three in a row, faced a fourth-and-2 at the 19-yard line with 4:38 on the game clock. It had a 20-19 lead - JCHS missed two extra-point kicks and Greenville failed on one - at the time, but the Jay County defense stopped Alec Watkins just a chain link short of the first down.

After a pair of running plays the Patriots had a key play of their own with third-and-5 from the 22-yard line. Quarterback Zach Cash looked for Justin Wygant on the left sideline, but Selo Ramjattan of Greenville stepped in front of the pass for the interception.

"If it's 20-20, I'm calling a little bit different game than I'm calling if it's 19-20," said Hill of the late-game situation. "But we had some opportunities to maybe do some things differently to make it not that situation. We got ourselves into that.

"We gave up a score at the end of the first half that gets us down a touchdown. So there's a lot of scenarios that led to the 19-20."

Jay County's defense forced another Green Wave fourth down situation, but this team the visiting team came through. With just 1:54 to go Jacob Burk found Zac Guillozet wide open the in the end zone for a 13-yard TD.

Burk then connected with Ramjattan on a 2-point conversion pass to all but finish off the Patriots in their final home game of the season.

"I give credit to Jay County," said Greenville coach T.J. Powers. "Those guys played hard ... It was a good, hard high school football game.

"We finally got a W, so it feels good. We've said it's a three-game season from here on out. Our goal is to get to 4-6, and we're 2-6 now."

The final JCHS drive ended on another interception, this one by Caleb Adkins on an option pass by Ben Vance.

Senior running back Michael Daniels accounted for all three Patriot touchdowns, the first of which was a 35-yard run up the middle that gave the home team a 7-0 lead four minutes into the second quarter.

But Greenville scored twice in the final 2:51 of the first half as sophomore runner Tyler Zimmerman provided a spark.

After registering no carries in the first four Green Wave drives, Zimmerman opened his night with a 23 yard scamper that keyed his squad's first scoring drive.

He ran for 62 yards on the next Greenville drive, scoring on an 11-yard run with 23 seconds left.

For the night, Zimmerman picked up 131 yards on just 12 carries as the Green Wave had 280 of its 321 total yards on the ground.

"Tyler had a nice game for us," said Powers. "As a sophomore he stepped up and did a nice job."

Daniels had TD runs of 1 and 19 yards in the second half as he finished with 63 yards on 20 carries. Cash was 9-of-12 passing for 61 yards.

Dillon Easton had another big game defensively for the Patriots, racking up 17 tackles. He added a sack, which pushed Greenville back to the 13-yard line for its fourth-and-goal situation late in the game.

"He's our captain out there," said Hill of Easton. "He sets the defense. He sets the tone. ... He's shows up with that lunch-pail mentality ... he wants to work. He wants to go out there and hit people. ... He runs sideline to sideline. I could go on and on. ... He plays all out, 1,000-miles an hour, all the time."

Hill said he's looking forward to next week, when the Patriots will travel to New Haven for the first round of sectional play.

"0-0," he said when asked about the tournament opener. "That's our record right now. ...

"Everybody starts over. It's a new season. ... We can put some of the stuff behind us, fix some of the things we still need to fix. The bottom line is in Indiana, with the all-in system, there's new life for everybody."[[In-content Ad]]