CARTHAGE, Mo. — Jon Guidie and his coaching staff saw it coming.
With 2:03 left in the game, his team held a 21-14 lead, but the Nixa Eagles had marched all the way down to the Tiger 10-yard line.
Senior quarterback Connor Knatcal zipped a pass into the end zone where Noah Engleman was waiting.
Most fans at David Haffner Stadium seemed to expect the Eagle field goal unit to tie the game, giving the Tigers a chance to win in the final 1:57, or a second chance in overtime as the crowd remained active and engaged. But Guidie said he anticipated Nixa coach John Perry’s next move.
“We had talked, ‘If they score, I bet they go for two,’” he said after the game. “Which was great, I thought that would be good, ‘Let’s get a stop right there and win the game.’ But they executed the play. They made one more play than we did.”
One more play and one more point were the difference as Nixa (3-0) came from behind to win 22-21, snapping a 23-game regular season winning streak for Carthage (2-1).
The decisive drive was set up by a pair of Tiger mishaps. With 8:12 left in the game and Carthage holding its one-score lead, Nixa went for it on fourth-down and 6 from the Carthage 47.
The Tigers made the stop, giving them a chance to make it a two-possession game moving into the late stages of the fourth quarter, but two plays later, 2021 Missouri Class 5 Player of the Year and Air Force commit Luke Gall lost a fumble around midfield.
The Carthage defense held, forcing a punt, but it rolled all the way to the 1-yard line, backing the offense up against its own end zone.
With little room to work with, the Tigers were forced to punt from their own 6, setting up the Eagles at the Tiger 33. Five plays later, Engleman scored.
“We had a couple of miscues there in the end,” Guidie said. “We turned the ball over and then we didn’t field a punt that we needed to. Just kind of let it slip through our hands. But, like I told the kids, man, those guys, other than those things, our effort was there all night. It really was, we played really, really, hard and they followed the game plan.”
That game plan was to burn clock on offense and keep the ball out of the hands of Knatcal, his multiplen targets and standout senior running back Ramone Green Jr., who entered the game averaging a first-down and some change (11 yards) per carry in the Eagles’ first two games.
Carthage accomplished that in the first half in particular, limiting Nixa to three offensive possessions in which Knatcal went 7-of-14 passing attempts for 96 yards and Green Jr. ran only six times for 29 yards.
Carthage converted on four fourth-down attempts in the first half and its second drive of the game lasted 20 plays, ending in a touchdown.
Gall finished with 171 rushing yards on 28 carries and two touchdowns, and senior quarterback Cooper Jadwin added 72 yards on 13 carries and a score of his own, to go with four completions on nine attempts and 74 yards through the air.
Guidie addressed his team after the game with a raucous celebration of Nixa players, coaches and fans in the background.
“There’s nothing you can say to make them feel any better,” he said. “You just want them to understand that that doesn’t deter us from our ultimate goal, which is a playoff run and getting back to that state championship game. That loss doesn’t deter us from that. I told them ‘Just be smart, get back here Monday and get back to work.’”
The Tigers will travel to face Carl Junction at Bulldog Stadium in Week 4.
