Dogs ruin senior night, hand Knights largest loss in 15 years
Robbinsville – What began as a highly-anticipated clash turned into a lopsided victory – for the visitors.
The Black Knights could not tap into the emotions fueled by the senior-night recognition before Friday’s home, regular-season finale against Murphy, watching a temporary second-quarter advantage slip away with a 41-point barrage from the Bulldogs, in an eventual 48-16 win for Murphy.
“On the first 3-4 drives, we kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” explained Robbinsville head coach Dee Walsh. “After we scored, we self-destructed. We were playing pretty good and then all of a sudden, they scored three times and the wheels just came off.”
Robbinsville (6-2, 2-1) snatched its only lead of the game with 11:09 to go before halftime. Coming off a Murphy punt, Cuttler Adams turned in back-to-back runs of 24 and 22 yards – with the latter resulting in a touchdown. He later carried in the conversion to make it 8-7, Black Knights.
Murphy (6-2, 3-0) responded with 41 unanswered points, before the Knights tacked on its final contributions with 1:18 left in the game: a 7-yard touchdown and immediate conversion run from Cooper Adams.
Cuttler’s pursuit of the school’s all-time rushing record (Rylee Anderson, 6,164) was limited to 99 yards on 19 carries. Cuttler now has 3,823 on his resume.
There is really no easy way to explain how the game got so out-of-hand, other than that the Bulldogs simply outfinessed Robbinsville in every category.
Hunter Stalcup posted 281 rushing yards on 22 carries, which included a trio of touchdowns – one of which went for 71 yards. Murphy quarterback Cole Laney was 10-of-11 in the air, slinging four touchdowns and picking up 208 yards along the way. His first touchdown heave – good for 64 yards – found Cameron Grooms for the first quarter’s lone score. Grooms ended the night with three scoring receptions.
The Knights also lost the battle on the front lines, with sophomore quarterback Bryce Adams falling victim to four sacks in his first varsity start. Bryce also fumbled the ball on a second-quarter rush, resulting in Brayden Killian scooping up the gift for the Bulldogs and Stalcup quickly recording a 32-yard run to the end zone in transition.
“Everybody has to own their part,” said Walsh. “We all made mistakes. Everybody can do better. We can’t point fingers and blame each other; we have to have each other’s back.
“That happens when you lose, especially when you lose big: everybody is ready to blame somebody else.”
The 32-point loss is the largest Robbinsville has incurred since 2007, when Cherokee shut out the Black Knights 38-0 in the final regular-season contest.
Moving on
As sour the loss to Murphy tastes, Robbinsville will have to quickly rinse and cleanse its palate.
There’s still work to be done.
The loss dropped the Knights to third in the conference. After rattling off three consecutive divisional titles, Robbinsville’s hopes of staying in the title hunt will first run through a visit to Hugh Hamilton Stadium on Friday, Oct. 21, as the Black Knights face the undefeated Andrews Wildcats. Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m.
Andrews (8-0) is enjoying its best start since 1964 and is the No. 1 ranked team in 1A as a result.
“We’ll go back to work; that’s all we can do,” Walsh said. “We need to earn a little respect back. We need to get ourselves back in the hunt, but the main thing is to get better every day and give ourselves a chance. We have three more weeks before the playoffs start, so hopefully we’ll get healed up and get ourselves turned in the right direction.”