By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Cartersville didn’t see Malcolm Brown in 2021, and the Malcolm Brown of 2022 hasn’t been nearly the same, thanks to a late-season knee injury last year.

          Brown had more than 1,300 rushing yards through nine-plus games when he went down in the 10th game of the 2021 season

          Cartersville got the Malcolm Brown of those first nine games in 2021 on Friday night.

          The workhorse senior running back went for 211 yards on 23 carries to lead Warner Robins to a 35-10 win over Cartersville at McConnell-Talbert Stadium in a GHSA Class 5A semifinal.

Friday’s Scouting Report and predictions: Cartersville at Warner Robins

          The teams played in at Georgia State in the 2020 state final, and Warner Robins rolled 62-28.

          The teams played in Cartersville in last year’s second round, and Warner Robins outlasted the hosts 24-17.

          The location again didn’t matter, Warner Robins again bearing more of a resemblance of Demons in recent years than of Demons in the first six weeks of the season.

          Since a 1-4 start, Warner Robins is 10-0, 3-0 against ranked teams. And twice in two weeks have the Demons broken the same heart they bruised a year ago. Warner Robins got a game-winning field goal in overtime last week from Daniel Barber to beat Creekside, which lost to the Demons 40-15 in a semifinal last year.

          Up next in the 5A championship in a week at 3:30 p.m. is Ware County, which is 3-1 against Warner Robins, 2-0 in postseason meetings.

          The latest rematch with Cartersville got off to a nice start for the Purple Hurricanes, who went up 3-0 less than four minutes in on a 27-yard field goal.

          And the light started dimming for Cartersville pretty quickly. Brown ripped off a run of nearly 50 yards, but Warner Robins settled for a Barber field goal at the 6:25 mark.

          Cartersville converted a fourth and 2 on the Demon 39, but fumbled, and Warner Robins recovered. Brown broke off a 27-yard run, and after a convoluted collection of plays, Elijah Antonio took the snap and bulled in from the 5, for a 10-3 lead 62 seconds into the second quarter.

          The Purple Hurricanes’ struggles continued, and they were picked off by Rasean Dinkins on a third-and-22 pass. A possession later, Brown went left through some arm tackles for a 49-yard touchdown run, and on came feelings of déjà vu, the Demons upping the lead to 17-3 midway through the second quarter.

          Barber added a 22-yard field goal in the final seconds for a 20-3 halftime lead.

          Warner Robins dealt a knockout punch with the first possession of the second half. Trey Gunnings took the handoff to the right side, veered back to the middle, blasted over one tackler at the 10, dragged one tackler from the 7 and picked up three more attempted tacklers and dragged them into the end zone to cap an impressive 28-yard scoring run.

          The two-point try failed, but it was still 26-3 with 8:57 left in the third.

          Cartersville finally cross the goal line three minutes later on a touchdown pass, but those good feelings didn’t last too long.

          Warner Robins gutted out its next possession, converting a fourth-and-short to set up quarterback Isiah Canion’s nice misdirection run of four yards. Another conversion failed, but the lead was 22 points with 21 seconds left.

          Warner Robins’ defense - keyed by Vic Burley, I Gibson, and Elijah Antonio, among others – kept the Purple Hurricanes in check, putting Cartersville in a second-and-25 situation only to pick off a third-down pass for the visitors’ fifth turnover.

          Barber capped the night with a dazzling 47-yard field goal with a little more than five minutes left.

          Canion was big in his third start since taking over for injured Chase Reese, completing 14 of 22 for 147 yards.