Spartans overcome injuries in season-opening win

TUSCALOOSA — So what does a football team that’s already short on experience in the offense do when they lose their starting running back to an injury in the first half of their season-opening game, and then his replacement comes up gimpy as well?

Next man up. Or maybe two men.

That’s where Sam Higgins climbed up the Mountain Brook High School offensive depth chart, and quarterback Strother Gibbs turned into more of a running back as well. Both helped the Spartans overcome a one-point halftime deficit and shut out host Northridge after the break, rolling to a 30-14 road victory to start their 2018 football season.

Gibbs had a hand in three of his team’s four touchdowns, running for two and passing for the third. When starting running back A.J. Gates came up limping from a big hit with 4:28 left in the first half, Gibbs, a sophomore, took up the slack and ran 18 yards for the Spartans’ second touchdown of the night. Gibbs had already gotten off to an auspicious beginning earlier in his first starting assignment, finding receiver Hamp Greene on a 56-yard pass down to the Jaguar 1-yard line. Daniel Wilbanks scored on the next play.

Still, Mountain Brook struggled a bit in the early going, as Northridge nudged ahead on a pair touchdown passes from Markie Buettner to Tra Miller — the first a 56-yard bomb five minutes into the game, and the other 35.6 seconds before intermission from 20 yards out. A blocked Spartan extra-point kick gave the Jags the slim lead.

But that was as far as Northridge got, as Atkins Roberts put Mountain Brook ahead for good with a 36-yard field goal in the third quarter.

Then with Gates on the sidelines, Wilbanks was the next man up at running back. Then Greene was hurt not long after the field goal, so the Spartan air assault was grounded, as Gibbs threw only two more times for the rest of the night. Higgins, a junior running back, came in and rattled off three straight runs deep in Northridge territory, setting up Gibbs for a 6-yard touchdown run.

Gibbs later applied the finishing touch on his last pass when he found receiver Pierce Rodrigues standing wide open near the goal line in the fourth quarter.

Gibbs finished with 11 completions in 13 attempts for 150 yards. Higgins ran for 77 yards on 10 carries, all in the second half.

While Spartan coach Chris Yeager had concerns about his inexperienced offense in the preseason, he was more confident about a defense that returned a host of starters, and they proved their mettle by holding the Jags to just one first down in the second half.

“It was a level of readiness that tested our depth and stretched our depth,” Yeager said. “We felt like if we could stretch their depth with our depth in the fourth quarter, we’d have a great advantage.”

Mountain Brook (1-0) hosts Center Point next week.

To purchase photos from the game, click here.