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Blue Devils come back to beat Blytheville

Blue Devils come back to beat Blytheville

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Second-half turnaround helps West Memphis seal deal over Chickasaws

WM School District After giving up two scoop-and-scores for touchdowns over 75 yards, being limited to minus 1-yard rushing and trailing at one point 17-0 in the first half, West Memphis head coach Billy Elmore figured his Blue Devils couldn’t have played much worse.

And that it just had to get better in the second half.

Elmore was right on both counts.

An 0-2 Blytheville team, which lost to Class 3A Osceola just a week earlier, held a 17-7 halftime lead, and you don’t have to be a football analyst to know the Blue Devil locker room was loud and colorful at halftime.

But the Blue Devils mustered enough mettle to outplay the Chicks in the final two quarters and hold on for a 34-31 victory on Friday night at Hamilton- Shultz Field.

“The only thing I can say positive is that we came back out after halftime and played harder,” said Elmore, whose team evened its record at 1-1. “It was not a good football game and it was not at the level at which our fans and our team expect to perform.

We’re going to go back and address that as early as Sunday afternoon.”

In the first half, if it could go wrong for West Memphis, it did go wrong.

On only their second offensive snap, a high snap went over the head of quarterback Owens Mc-Connell and Blytheville’s Kylen Wells scooped it up and raced 85 yards for a touchdown.

Lightning struck again with just 57 seconds left in the game as the Blue Devils were a play or two away with a 10-point lead from getting into victory formation. A fumbled snap was recovered by the Chicks’ Kentorious Dotstry, who outran everybody for a 75-yard touchdown to give the visitors a glimmer of hope with just inside a minute to play.

Curiously, the Chicks used an intermediate kick instead of an onside kick and it allowed the Blue Devils to successfully cover it and run out the clock.

As Elmore alluded to, the first half was ugly for the hosts.

The rushing attack was below freezing level, the Blue Devil defense gave up 101 yards on the ground and the visitors controlled the line of scrimmage.

“We gave (Blytheville) 14 points just on stupid mental mistakes,” Elmore added. “Honestly, right now it’s just not real good football we’re watching.”

The script flipped, though, in the second half. The Blue Devils received the second-half kickoff and senior Cedric Loving, who rushed for 109 yards in the final two quarters, returned it 64 yards to put the hosts in business at the Blytheville 17.

Three plays later, Loving fittingly charged into the end zone from 11 yards out and gave the Blue Devils the momentum for the first time all night.

“We went into our power package after the second- half kickoff and we

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