By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
The question Nixa football coach John Perry posed to his team this week was this: how good of a team are we?
And the answer, after Perry’s Eagles built a 27-0 lead and then won 34-14 on the road at Carthage, was pretty darn good.
“I think we’re a really good football team because I think they are a good football team,” Perry said of Carthage, which entered the night ranked fourth in Class 5. “They have been for the 20 years (Jon Guidie) has been over there. I thought really for the first time in our five-year series we were more physical. I thought our kids played hard, I thought we hit them really hard. I felt really good about our team. We are big and physical on the line of scrimmage. We’re strong. We’ve been doing a great job in the weight room and it showed tonight.”
Nixa, ranked fourth in Class 6, emerged as one of two unbeaten teams remaining in the Central Ozark Conference, along with Neosho. The 4-0 Eagles got there in part by once again excelling on either side of halftime.
With Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz looking on from the south end zone, after arriving in a bright red helicopter that circled the stadium before kickoff, the Eagles took a 6-0 lead on a 35-yard touchdown pass from Adam McKnight to Wyatt Vincent in the final minute of the first quarter.
Ty Kellis recovered a fumble at the Carthage 42-yard line a minute into the second, and that led to another McKnight-to-Vincent touchdown pass, this one for 28 yards. That made it 13-0.
The Eagles got the ball back at their own 1 with four minutes remaining, and needed almost every second of that to build a three-touchdown lead. Twice Nixa converted on fourth down––the second time on 4th-and-9 from the Carthage 39. On that play, Mcknight connected with Randy Flint, who caught the ball inside the 10 and scored with four seconds on the clock.
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Nixa extended its lead to 27-0 with a 51-yard scoring drive to open the third quarter. Dylan Rebura punched it in from the 1, three plays after Lane Meltabarger caught an 8-yard pass on 3rd-and-7 to keep things moving.
“That four minutes before and after (halftime) are huge,” Perry said. “We’ve been really good at that four minutes in the ballgames we’ve been in, even going back to Webb City. It was a close game and the four and four was in our favor. I’m really proud of how physical we’re playing on defense, how we run to the ball and then have control of the line of scrimmage on offense. If you can run the ball you have a chance to win a bunch of games and we can run the football. We’ve got some really big guys up front. Adam McKnight has added a whole other dimension to the offense, being able to throw it like he can throw it. He’s phenomenal. We’re pretty good at football.”
Carthage, which punted twice and turned it over twice on its four possessions in the first half, broke the Nixa shutout with a 1-yard touchdown by Landyn Collins with 9:51 left in the game.
As soon as Nixa got the ball back, Rebura broke free for an 80-yard touchdown to make it 34-7. Carthage’s Collins scored on a 2-yard run with 2:23 remaining for the final points of the game.
Nixa amassed 431 yards of offense and Carthage totaled 212. McKnight completed 6 of 10 passes for 102 yards. Vincent made four catches for 76 yards and Keivon Flint had two for 53. Rebura rushed 20 times for 205 yards, and McKnight added 49 on the ground.
Collins led Carthage (3-1) with 105 yards on 24 carries.
