Fire Escape Macon 55-54
Keith Murphy
Sunday August 7, 2005
One of the reasons behind the Knights’ collapse was penalties. Macon was penalized 13 times for 62 yards and some of those penalties were, to put it mildly, questionable. The penalties included a mystifying call by a substitution official whose blunder forced the Knights to use backup quarterback, Chris Hessel, as a wide receiver on the team’s final drive when WR/DB Jamaal Garman was incorrectly ruled ineligible. Macon head coach Derek Stingley was just as mystified by the blown calls as everyone else. "I question a lot of calls tonight. I really do. The substitution issue, I question that. I was out of guys to put in because they blew the substitution call. But this was a good team that we played. This was two good teams that battled to the very last second and I take my hat off to this team and I really hope they go all the way. I feel bad for my players right now because they played hard and I truly feel the officials took the game away from us. Once again the officials are being stars of the game instead of letting the players be stars."
With the exception of the fourth quarter, the Macon defense shut down the Fire who, coming in to the game, boasted the second best offense in the league. Yet it was Macon’s aggressive defensive play which kept Louisville off balance early in the game. Macon held Louisville to only 20 points through three quarters, including a scoreless third quarter, and Stingley says he felt good about the way his defense played. "My guys did exactly what I asked them to do."
Fire quarterback Matt Sauk admitted that his team knew it had been just won a tough battle. "We knew they’d be a tough team. Whenever we play Macon, man they’re tough. We had a lot of things going wrong for us on this trip. We went through three busses, we stayed on the thirteenth floor of the hotel, I’m serious, everything was against us. And the refs, I thought, were making some serious questionable calls all game long and we still did it. We just came together and we finished it off."
Stingley says that Louisville changed some of their tactics as they made their fourth quarter surge. "They did some hurry-up stuff. Our guys were dragging a little. They got some quick stuff on us. But, once again, their quarterback, he played a great game. He threw all the right reads and he did exactly what he needed to do as a quarterback."
Sauk led the Fire offense, completing 30 of 42 passes for 294 yards and 7 touchdowns. Five of those touchdowns came in the final stanza. Rob Mager caught four touchdown passes for the Fire. He caught 15 passes for a total of 167 yards on the evening.
For the Knights, Lionel Hayes completed 21 of 31 passes for 257 yards and 6 touchdowns. Hayes also rushed for one score. Chris Johnson caught 12 passes for 136 yards and 4 scores. Neither quarterback was sacked nor intercepted.
With the loss, the season ends for the Knights. Their record for 2005 stands at 8 and 9. Louisville continues on. Their record improves to 11 and 5 and the Fire play Manchester next weekend.
Dr. Murphy has nearly 20 years of media experience ranging from radio to the Internet. He has served as webmaster for two AF2 teams and the football team at Fort Valley State University. He is a professor at FVSU and directs www.bunniwerks.org, a non-profit rabbit rescue organization. He has been commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel. Murphy is also serving as a first party editor of af2 stories for ArenaFfan. For more information about Dr. Murphy see: www.keithmurphy.info