If you had handed me the Emerald stat sheet with the score torn off the top, I would have told you BHP lost, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. The Vikings ran 46 offensive plays and turned them into 490 yards, which works out to 10.7 yards every time they snapped the ball. Their quarterback, Beau Hite, completed 17 of 20 passes for 344 yards and three touchdowns, the kind of line you expect to see on a 7-on-7 sheet in July. Numbers like that usually come stapled to a loss, and on Friday night in Greenwood they kept things uncomfortable from the first quarter to the last.
BHP won anyway, 35–30, and how it won is the whole story. Emerald got its yards in big gulps. Them Bears got theirs a carry at a time, piling up 305 rushing yards and 35 points, both season highs, and scoring all five touchdowns without needing the defense or special teams to chip in a single point.
The first quarter told you what kind of night it was going to be. Emerald’s opening score came on a 65-yard touchdown pass from Hite to Joe Moore, one throw covering most of the field, and only a missed extra point kept it at 6–0. BHP’s answer came from the freshman. Amire Rosemond ran in the first of his two touchdowns, James Johnson added the extra point, and the Bears were in front 7–6.
That lead didn’t make it out of the quarter, but neither did Emerald’s next one. Hite found Desiray Christian for the first of Christian’s two touchdown catches to put the Vikings back up 13–7, and Cam Robinson answered with a touchdown run of his own before Johnson’s kick made it 14–13 BHP after one. That’s three lead changes and 27 combined points in twelve minutes, so anybody who wandered in late showed up to a completely different ballgame than the one they were expecting.
Even that early, you could see the two offenses taking different roads. Emerald was scoring on big throws. BHP was running the football and spreading the touches around, and in the second quarter that approach started to create some room.
Tizere Ware got the next one, punching in his first touchdown of the night, and Johnson’s kick made it 21–13. That gave BHP rushing touchdowns from three different players on its first three scores, which is a problem for any defense trying to decide who to load up on. Then Rylan Crooks found Malachi Bohler for a touchdown and a 28–13 lead. BHP threw for just 27 yards all night, and Bohler finished with three catches and that score, so the Bears didn’t throw much, but they made it count when they did.
It’s worth slowing down on what that first half meant. A week earlier, in the region title game at Wren, BHP scored 21 points in a 41–21 loss, and one of those touchdowns came from the defense. At Emerald, all four first-half touchdowns came from the offense, and by the end of the night it was five for five.
Emerald kicked a field goal just before the break to make it 28–16, but BHP had won the second quarter 14–3 and turned a one-point lead into a twelve-point cushion.
Twelve points feels like room until you remember how potent this Emerald offense has been all season, and the third quarter made that point in a hurry. BHP didn’t score in the period. Emerald did, on Hite’s second touchdown pass to Christian, and the extra point cut it to 28–23. That was only the second touchdown anybody has scored against BHP in a third quarter all season.
Christian was a problem all night. He caught five passes for 142 yards and two touchdowns, which comes to 28.4 yards a catch with a long of 75, and Coleson Marino added seven catches for 84 yards. That’s where the most important number of the game lives. BHP ran 63 offensive plays for 332 yards, and Emerald ran 46 for 490. The Bears were gaining 5.3 yards a snap, so every scoring drive had to be put together a few yards at a time, while Emerald had at least three plays of 50 yards or more (Christian’s 75-yard catch, Moore’s 65-yard touchdown reception and a 50-yard Moore run). When the other team can flip the field in one snap, a twelve-point lead can shrink to five before you’ve finished worrying about it, and that’s exactly what happened.
BHP’s answer was to keep doing what had worked all night. Rosemond found the end zone for his second touchdown, Johnson made it five extra points in five tries, and the lead was back to 35–23. (Johnson is now 25 for 25 on PATs this season, which is the kind of number nobody talks about until the night it matters.)
Rosemond, another week, another big night. He carried six times for 81 yards and two touchdowns, an average of 13.5 yards a carry with a long of 30, then returned three kickoffs for 93 yards and made four solo tackles on defense for good measure. He had company, too. Cam Robinson finished with 23 carries for 150 yards and a touchdown, and his 61-yard run was the longest by any Bear this season. That’s the most carries, the most rushing yards and the longest run by a BHP player in any game this year, all on the same night.
Emerald wasn’t done though. Moore, who finished with 116 rushing yards on 16 carries (7.3 a pop, with a long of 50), added a rushing touchdown to go with his receiving score, and the extra point made it 35–30.
That set up the last real test of the night.
When Emerald got the ball back needing a touchdown, it started on its own 1-yard line, and seven plays later the Vikings had covered 95 yards of it. The biggest piece of that drive came on a 54-yard reception by Marino, and for a moment it looked like it was going to cover the rest. Marino caught the ball at the BHP 33 with a step on his man and nobody between him and the end zone. At that same moment, Judd Lowie was standing on the hash at the 31. He was technically two yards closer to the goal line, but he was over on the hash, with not the ideal angle, with a receiver already running free. To make the play, he had to turn, sprint and beat Marino to a spot before Marino got to the end zone, and from how I mentally calculate the geometry, it seemed close to impossible.
Lowie ran him down at the 7.
I’ve tried to write about that play a handful of different ways since Friday, and every version comes up short, so I’m going to quit trying to describe it and just tell you what it did. It gave this BHP defense one more chance, and that’s all this group has wanted all season. If you were looking for one play that sums up this whole year, I’d put that one in the running.
In a game where the defense gave up a lot of yards, it made the last four impossible to get. After a defensive pass interference (which is not an automatic first down in high school football), Emerald faced fourth and goal from the 4. Hite rolled out and threw back toward the middle of the field, and Adrian McGlotten was there, leaping to break up the pass. BHP took over on downs, ran it a couple of times, lined up in victory formation, and the 35–30 win was locked up.
I’m not going to tell you that 305 rushing yards is a formula that works against everybody BHP will see in the playoffs, because every playoff opponent brings something different. But after a week at Wren where the offense had trouble sustaining drives, watching it line up and produce five touchdowns on its own was the most encouraging thing BHP has shown all season.
The other thing Friday showed, once again, is that this team is never out of it. They fight for one another, and now they’ve found one more way to win, which is a good thing to have in your pocket heading into November. You can’t really put a number on that, but some teams just have a knack for it, and this one does.
Zoom out and this season looks nothing like it did in September. BHP opened 0–2 with losses to T.L. Hanna and Daniel, then reeled off five straight over J.L. Mann, Abbeville, Greenwood, Palmetto and Powdersville. Wren snapped that streak, and the Bears answered by going on the road and winning a shootout. That’s 6–3, six wins in the last seven games, second place in the region and the No. 4 seed in the playoffs. Some folks didn’t think a season like this was within reach for the Bears, but ask any one of them and they’ll tell you it’s not enough, and it’s not over yet.
Playoff Projections
While the game was going on Friday, we were keeping an eye on a few other scores around the state. With the win, and with a tough non-conference schedule behind it, BHP was able to jump the other two second-place teams and lock up the No. 4 overall seed. Those hard non-conference and region games paid off under the new RPI system, which is now used in every classification.
The system works like this. Region champions and runners-up get automatic bids, and the rest of the field is filled based on RPI, a formula built 40 percent on your own record, 30 percent on your opponents’ records and 30 percent on your opponents’ opponents’ records. Put those last two together and 60 percent of the number comes down to who you played, which is why a hard non-conference schedule stops being something to survive and starts being something that pays you back in November.
Seeding works in layers. Within each half of the bracket, the region champions are seeded first in RPI order, and the runners-up come next. Wren’s higher RPI let it jump Daniel for the No. 1 seed, with Daniel second and Chapman third, which put the No. 4 seed, and the first-round bye that comes with it, in the hands of whichever runner-up had the best RPI.
The three second-place teams were Pickens in Region 1, BHP in Region 2 and Blue Ridge in Region 3, and BHP had the highest RPI of the group, nearly 0.032 ahead of Pickens. I know that sounds small, but for perspective, the gap between Daniel and Wren was 0.00039.
So there’s no game this Friday. BHP will play on November 13 against the winner of Seneca and Southside, and because of the High School League sanctions, that game will be on the road.
And yes, I think the storylines are writing themselves. Coach Crane came to BHP from Seneca, so if Seneca takes care of business this week, that’s one matchup that won’t need any help finding an angle.
Wrap Up
Emerald had the yards, the completions and the biggest plays of the night. BHP had its best offensive night of the season and a defensive stand as important as any this program has made over the last few years. That’s how you get outgained by 158 yards and still come home second in the region, with the No. 4 seed, a first-round bye and a week to get ready for whoever comes out of Seneca and Southside.
No game this Friday, Bear Fans, but don’t go far. Keep an eye on the Seneca and Southside score, and follow us on Facebook and X, where we’ll post the matchup details, next week's Bear Tracks and the GameDay Graphic as we get ready for Playoff Football.