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Titans improve to 3-0 with another dominant win; will travel to High Point Central next Friday

By Marc Pruitt
For the Clemmons Courier

West Forsyth overcame some early sloppy play to eventually steamroll its way to a convincing 53-13 win against visiting North Mecklenburg on Friday night at Jerry Peoples Stadium.

The Titans scored 40 unanswered points — including 33 in the second half on five straight possessions — behind their dynamic rushing attack and a punishing defense that shut out and shut down the Vikings in the second half and didn’t allow a first down until late in the fourth quarter.

“What a great second half we had,” Coach Adrian Snow said. “We asked them at halftime to respond and we are proud that they did. We’ve haven’t had much adversity yet and I think we needed it. This was good for us. That’s life. And we needed this to get better. Everything can’t always be sunshine and roses. We’ve been pretty successful so far, and the bad thing about that is, everyone thinks you can just walk out here and flip the switch on, beat them, and then turn around and go home. Well, North Meck plays football too. They practice too. We just decided that we needed to get going and make some things happen.”

G’mone Wilson (19 carries, 158 yards and three touchdowns) and Zy Dillard (20 carries, 119 yards and two touchdowns) were the catalysts for the Titans, with Nasion Johnson adding 33 yards on four carries and a 5-yard scoring run as West piled up 300 rushing yards behind its bruising offensive line.

West (3-0) took an early 13-0 lead in the first quarter after 25-yard scoring strike from Jalen Ferguson to C.J. Graham and a 5-yard touchdown run from Wilson. It appeared that the game might follow the same script as the Titans’ previous two blowout wins this season against Dudley and Mooresville.

Then, some uncharacteristic sloppiness set in.

The Titans had two consecutive punts blocked that North Mecklenburg capitalized on and turned into its only points of the game.

John Geter hooked up with Da’Quon Stewart on a 41-yard scoring pass that cut the lead to 13-6 after Stewart was well behind the Titans’ secondary. The Vikings tied the game at 13 after Geter connected with Aamauri Johson for a 15-yard touchdown.

Dillard got the lead back for West with a 36-yard touchdown run with 3:59 left in the second quarter, giving the Titans a 19-13 lead at halftime.

“I think we made our minds up at halftime that we needed to get back to doing what we do,” Snow said. “We changed a couple of things up on defense and on offense. We just started doing things right. We kicked that ball off to start the second half and we made our minds up — here we go. We had to flush it. That was really the difference. We got back to playing West Forsyth football.”

Wilson scored the first of five straight touchdowns for the Titans on a 7-yard run and a 26-13 lead, and the rout was on.

Ferguson found Stephan McMillian with an 8-yard touchdown pass, Wilson added a 6-yard touchdown run, Dillard scored on a 5-yard run, and Johnson closed the scoring on a 5-yard run late in the fourth quarter.

North Mecklenburg was disrupted throughout the game by Patrick Smith, West’s 6-5, 350-pound defensive lineman as well as linebackers Slade Garraghty and Mack David. Jake Hill broke through on several blitzes to disrupt pass attempts, as the Titans held the Vikings to 47 yards of offense in the second half, most of which came on the Vikings’ final drive of the game.

West will defend its unblemished record when it plays at High Point Central (0-3) next Friday.

NM  6   7   0    0     —  13

WF   13 6   20   14  — 53

WF — Graham 25 pass from Ferguson (kick failed)

WF — Wilson 5 run (Jaylen James kick)

NM — Stewart 41 pass from Geter (kick failed)

NM — Johnson 15 pass from Geter (Fortune kick)

WF — Dillard 41 run (run failed)

WF — Wilson 7 run (James kick)

WF — McMillian 8 pass from Ferguson (James kick)

WF — Wilson 6 run (kick failed)

WF — Dillard 5 run (Megan Peters kick)

WF — Johnson 5 run (Peters kick)