The Owensboro Red Devils gave it everything they had until the final whistle Saturday afternoon at Kroger Field, but Bowling Green proved to be a formidable foe in the 2020 KHSAA UK Orthopedic Surgery & Sports Medicine Class 5A State Final.
The Purples led wire-to-wire as they took down the Red Devils 17-7 for their first state championship since 2016, while Owensboro finished runner-up for the second time in seven seasons.
“Losing is always tough,” Red Devil coach Jay Fallin said. “When you lose the last game of the year and the season’s over, it’s always difficult. It’s difficult to say goodbye to the seniors. It hurts a little worse, as awesome as it is to be competing for a state championship game, it always hurts a little worse when you get here and lose.
“Right in the moment, in the immediacy of the moment, it’s tough but when we get some distance from this, I know these guys are going to look back on this experience and this season, which was in jeopardy from the very beginning of maybe not even happening, and be very proud of what they accomplished even though they came up a little short of our ultimate goal tonight.”
Owensboro wanted to make a point to get the running game going early but Bowling Green had other plans.
The Purples defense was as good as advertised in the game, as they held OHS to 20 rushing yards on 23 carries.
“We struggled to block them up front and to get anything going in the run game,” Fallin said. “Anytime you struggle to get anything going in the run game, it’s going to be a long night particularly when they’re not using numbers to defend you. They were kind of just beating us up front and they had some great players. That makes it difficult to get our kids in situations they can be successful. We’ll have to go back and look at the film but our kids battled. Again, got to give a lot of credit to coach Spader and his defense.”
Neither team could find their footing in the first half as the game was scoreless after the first 12 minutes.
Bowling Green’s Colin Fratus got his team on the board with 9:02 left in the first half as he buried a 24-yard field goal, just his second of the year.
Owensboro junior Gavin Wimsatt threw his first of two interceptions in the game with 7:25 left in the first when BG’s Eli Burwash pulled it down to give the Purples their 21st takeaway of the playoffs.
Bowling Green later scored on a 17-yard run by senior quarterback Conner Cooper to give them a 10-0 lead heading into the second half.
Fallin said he’s proud of how his team finished and how they responded in the locker room during the break.
“They battled until the finish,” he said. “It would have been very easy to tuck tail. The margin at halftime was 10-0 but it felt probably a little greater than that because their defense was so suffocating today. We were having such a hard time getting anything going offensively but our kids didn’t quit and in fact, in the locker room at halftime, they were picking each other up by the time I got in there and encouraging each other, I’m very proud of that fact, that fact they fought to the end. Defense had an outstanding day today against a good Bowling Green offense.”
Wimsatt threw his second interception with 7:10 left in the third quarter, which led to a Jordan Dingle score when the University of Kentucky signee punched it in from a yard out to give the Purples a 17-0 lead with 4:53 left in the frame.
Wimsatt finished 31-of-60 for 279 yards and a score when he found Kendrick Williams late in the fourth for the Red Devils’ only score of the game.
Fallin said the junior had a tough assignment against the stingy Purple defense.
“We just had to ask him to do a lot,” he said. “It really was kind of unfair because they were dropping eight and we couldn’t run the ball. If they’re dropping eight and you couldn’t run the ball, it’s going to be a long night for your quarterback because when their three up front are preventing you from running the ball, it’s tough. It’s tough to get anything going. Now they’ve got eight on your wideouts and it seems like they’re everywhere. They had a really good gameplan.”
Despite the loss, the Red Devil defense only allowed 199 yards in the game with BG getting 116 of those yards on the ground.
“The beginning of the year, the question mark was our defense,” Fallin said. “Our defense has done an outstanding job of improving over the course of the year and I think that was on full display tonight against a really good team.”
Senior linebacker Austin Gough led OHS with 7 total tackles.
Gough said they’ve prided themselves on defense this season and he too is happy with how they fought throughout the game.
When asked about his fellow seniors, Gough will always have great memories.
“They’re my brothers,” he said. “It goes way back. … We started playing together when we were 6 years old, same group of guys. No new guys came in. It’s been a fun ride and I’m blessed to be here.”
Owensboro returns several key players in 2021, including Wimsatt, Kenyata Carbon, Javius Taylor, Maurice Moorman and many more.
“We took a step forward this year from last year,” Fallin said.
Fallin said even though they won’t bring Owensboro High School its first football state championship since 1986, it doesn’t mean this season is a loss. Not even close.
“When we start a season, the goal is to win a state championship,” he said. “But if the standard is state championship or the season is a failure, that’s ridiculous. We’ve been playing football at Owensboro High School since 1895 and we’ve only won — we claim four with 1917 and 1954 — but as far as the KHSAA in concerned, in all those years, we’ve won two.
“Does that mean the other 123 years we’ve played football are failures? That’s ridiculous. Did we come up short of our ultimate goal? Yes. Is this season a failure? Absolutely not. If for no other reason than for June, we didn’t even know if we were going to have a season and these kids found a way to grind through an uncertainty preseason and push themselves to be prepared. For all of those reasons, I’m just really proud of them for who they are, what they did, what they accomplished and what they’ve meant to our program.”
