By Thomas Sellers Jr.
GERMANTOWN — The playoff history for the Millington Trojans at the Germantown Football Stadium is storied.
The Black and Gold faithful remember games from 1997 coming down to a two-point conversion and other classic Second Round clashes with the normal home team Germantown Red Devils.
This Friday night the Trojans finally returned to Germantown for a November contest. But the home team was the Memphis East Mustangs. East used the Memphis Shelby County School venue for their home facility for the First Round Class 3A showdown with Millington.
The Trojans seemed to be more comfortable on the natural grass of Germantown Football Stadium jumping ahead 21-0 in the first quarter. Millington withstood the Mustang rally to prevail 37-12.
“Always good in the playoffs to win,” Millington Head Coach Chris Michael said. “You just take it one week at a time, try to do your best to get a win. Then start preparing for next week. We were glad.”
Millington (7-4) got the first big break of the night when East muffed a punt. With a short field the Trojans navigated the 23 yards to the first touchdown of the night. Millington quarterback McCoy Pugh did the honors with a 3-yard TD run.
The Millington 7-0 lead grew to 14-0 when Pugh raced to the end zone from further out. The junior signal caller exploded for a 54 yard touchdown run at the 5:48 mark of the opening quarter.
The Trojans finished off the first quarter with a Pugh to Chase Michael 13-yard touchdown pass. Michael took the short pass and broke tackles to reach the end zone making the score 21-0 heading into the second period.
“East is like they always are,” Coach Michael noted. “They got a lot of size and athletes. The coaches do a good job with them. They’re just young. Most of his interior linemen are young and have a lot of sophomores.
“I think his running back was a freshman,” he continued. “I don’t think he had any seniors really out there on the field. He’s got a really young team and those kids played hard. They gave us a lot of trouble especially on the offensive side of the ball.”
The Mustangs (5-6) used the running of Lorenz Wright, Jeremiah Evans and quarterback Demarcio Gary to score twice in the second quarter. Evans powered the ball over the goal line with 8 minutes and 31 second remaining in the first half to make the score 21-12.
“They were blitzing and making it chaotic for us,” Michael noted. “But I was really proud of our kids. They had some penalties but kept pecking away. It put us in some tough situations but they kept pecking away. We’ve just got to win and get out of here.”
Needing to regain the momentum, Millington marched the ball down the field near the end of the first half. Chase Michael concluded the drive with his normal method of scoring, kicking a 31-yard field goal to make the tally 24-12 at the break.
The Trojan defense made adjustments and controlled the East offense in the final 24 minutes. Players like Cameron Puryear, Jonathan Temple-Dowdy, J’vion Todd, Jeremiah Temple-Dowdy, Jackson Ford and others made tackles in the backfield.
Meanwhile the offense iced the game with Jayden Williams scoring a 6-yard touchdown to make the score 31-12. The final TD of the night came when Millington receiver Blake Garner made a one-handed catch on a fade route from Pugh for a 9-yard touchdown.
Now the Trojans earned a Second Round showdown with the Covington Chargers. This game will serve as a rematch of the Covington 44-0 win back on Sept. 2.
“We’re going to go try (to pull off the upset),” Michael said. “What we want to do when we go up there, be at full strength on the offensive side of the ball and clicking on all cylinders. Make them defend the full field. We want to make them defend the quarterback run, the running back, make them defend all of our receivers. And if they check any of them, make them pay for it.
“We have to have a better defensive performance because we gave up big play after big play,” he concluded. “I’ve been watching that film this week a little bit. They scored 42 points, 6 touchdowns on about 12 plays. Literally they run about 15 to 20 offensive plays in the first half. It was big play after big play. As we broke it down and looked at it, we blew assignments, lined up wrong. We just got to be better on the defensive side of the ball.”
