Sports

South Georgia wins on another miracle

• South Georgia wins on the final play in its second game of the season, this time against the Austin Wranglers.

Mark Swanson
Austin American-Statesman

AUSTIN, Texas — The Austin Wranglers have come a long way in the last two weeks, but as they discovered Sunday, old habits can be hard to break.

A 58-56 loss to the South Georgia Wildcats will be remembered for the dramatic final play that decided the game in excruciating fashion. Andrico Hines’ 15-yard touchdown pass to Scott Cloman as time expired capped a contest in which Austin made several big plays down the stretch but couldn’t make up for a multitude of earlier mistakes.

The Wildcats also defeated Tennessee Valley on the final play.

“Too many mistakes, things we shouldn’t be doing,” coach Ben Bennett said after the loss to coach Derek Stingley’s Wildcats. “It’s not just one big thing, it’s a lot of little things. I don’t know if we regressed, but we definitely didn’t do a lot of things we were supposed to do.”

The final minutes saw the Wranglers make several plays that gave them a chance to win.

Ricky Williams recovered an onside kick with 4 minutes, 51 seconds left and his team down 52-49. Austin (2-4) began to march down the field and had a third-and-goal at the 4-yard line with 1:23 left. Andy Hall found Mel Long on a quick out for the score and the lead with one minute remaining.

Of course, that’s an eternity in arenafootball2. South Georgia (4-2) started its answer and was on the Austin 10 with 39 seconds left.

The Wildcats almost self-destructed. A false start penalty pushed them back five yards, and Hines apparently did not realize the game clock had started while in the huddle.

He had to spike the ball with three seconds left, just to have the chance to make the game-winning throw.

Cloman got inside of Travis Pugh on a slant, and Hines hit him in stride to shock the Wranglers and the 3,003 fans at the Erwin Center.

“It’s a tough one to take,” Austin receiver/linebacker Mel Long said. “We had some problems with communication all game long and we have to get that fixed. They’re a more athletic offense than what we’ve seen the last two weeks, but we didn’t play as well defensively as we can.”

Prior to the final dagger, the Wranglers were very up-and-down.

Offensively, Austin moved the ball fairly well and found some big plays deep. Hall’s first two passes went for touchdowns of 36 and 33 yards and the Wranglers put up 322 yards of total offense.

There were flubs that negated some of that, though. Hall was sacked three times and fumbled on one of those. Six penalties also didn’t help.

A win Sunday would have put Austin’s season record at .500 heading into its first bye week, with a trip to 1-5 Texas up next. Instead, the Wranglers are again chasing the rest of the league

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