Spartans handle Gardendale, finish regular season strong
MOUNTAIN BROOK – Last fall, the Spartans were on the wrong side of momentum entering the playoffs after losing the regular season finale.
This time around, the Mountain Brook High School football team seized some momentum heading into the postseason, as the Spartans handled visiting Gardendale, 38-14, on Friday night at Spartan Stadium.
“Overall, we played pretty good, clean ball,” said Mountain Brook head coach Chris Yeager following the game.
It was about as much as Mountain Brook (8-2) could have hoped for in its tune-up heading into the Class 7A state playoffs — which begin next week when the Spartans travel to Austin — after consecutive losses to Region 3 foes Thompson and Hoover.
“It’s everything,” Yeager said of the importance of confidence as the postseason approaches. “The whole thing when you hit the playoffs is how are you trending? Are you trending upward or are you trending downward? You’re not going to be staying the same.”
Mountain Brook capped off the 2017 regular season with a loss to Ramsay, but the Spartans convincingly flipped that script on Friday. Yeager said running back AJ Gates played his best game of the season, as the senior running back exploded for 136 yards and two touchdowns in addition to a 91-yard kickoff return late in the second quarter.
“He really did a great job making reads and stuff, so I was really excited to see what he did,” Yeager said.
The game began with a unique twist, as Mountain Brook siblings forced turnovers on Gardendale’s maiden two possessions. After a long kickoff return put Gardendale in good field position to start the contest, Mountain Brook’s Grant Griffin picked off a pass as he tiptoed along the sideline.
Following a Mountain Brook punt, Clark Griffin recovered a fumble on the very next Rockets play. The Spartans dented the scoreboard first on Atkins Roberts’ 33-yard field goal.
“How many times has that happened, brothers getting back-to-back turnovers? That was pretty special,” Yeager said.
Gates took over after that. On the second play of the next Spartans drive, he burst up the middle for a 36-yard touchdown to make it 10-0. He returned the kickoff for a score immediately following a long Gardendale touchdown drive that required 16 plays to make the score 24-7 in favor of Mountain Brook at the half.
Hamp Greene returned the opening kickoff of the second half all the way to the Gardendale 37-yard line, and Gates scored from that distance on the first play from scrimmage to increase the lead to 31-7.
Strother Gibbs hit Crawford Golden on a well-designed fake toss, as Golden slipped past the defense and scored on a 24-yard reception to give Mountain Brook a 17-0 lead at the time. Gibbs added a touchdown on the ground in the fourth quarter, but attempted just five passes in the contest, completing three of them for 49 yards.
That’s an area that wasn’t needed much on Friday, but one Yeager would like to see more from as the games ramp up next week.
“The biggest thing is we need to get our passing attack on track,” he said. “We’ve been able to run the ball all year long, but we’ve got to be able to throw the ball better than we have.”
Mountain Brook’s stout defense held Gardendale to 233 yards on the evening, with 95 of those yards coming on a 10-minute drive the Rockets put together in the fourth quarter. The Rockets ran 20 plays and scored on a 5-yard run from Jaylan Chapman. Rockets quarterback Will Crowder completed 16-of-25 passes for 105 yards.
Next week, the Spartans travel to the No. 2 seed from Region 4, Austin, for the first round of the state playoffs. As the fourth seed from Class 6A, Region 6, Gardendale (5-5) travels to take on Fort Payne.