It wasn’t complicated.
Buckingham County’s Maurice Taylor, Ja’Rodd Wade and Tarian Ayers piled up 199 combined yards on the ground, while the Knights’ defense held Fluvanna County’s offense without a touchdown.
And with that simple formula, Buckingham is 4-0 with a critical win over a Group AA opponent.
The unbeaten Knights rolled 28-10 over the Flyin’ Flucos, who tallied their only touchdown on a blocked field goal by T.J. Dudley that Kyle Pillow returned 82 yards for a score. Outside of that, the Flucos’ struggled to move the ball against an attacking Buckingham defense.
“We just feel good to come over here and win,” said Knights coach Craig Gill. “We circled up and I said ‘Boys, I’m going to tell you, we’re outnumbered, I feel like [General George] Custer here tonight.”
Gill’s defense didn’t play like they were outnumbered, but that unit got a substantial break from the late first quarter to the late second when Buckingham’s offense put together a 19-play, 73-yard drive that wound 9:15 off the clock. Fluvanna prolonged the match on a roughing the kicker penalty during a 48-yard field goal try by the Knights. Taylor, who didn’t have many touches until that point, capped the drive with a hard-nosed 9-yard run where he barely reached over the front corner pylon.
Ayers kick-started that grueling possession with back-to-back 11 and 13 yard runs. With Fluvanna focused on keeping the Knights from getting to the edge on jet sweeps out of the spread, Buckingham turned to Ayers, faking the sweep and letting the sophomore quarterback loose up the middle.
“We haven’t really worked on it in practice, but if something starts working for us in the game we start to roll with it,” Ayers said. “I give the line a lot of credit, they kept me motivated and kept my head in the game.””
Ayers and Taylor finished with 72 yards each while Wade had 55 yards on 13 touches. Ayers averaged 7.2 yards per carry on the night and also connected with Antonn Briley on a 48-yard touchdown pass that answered Fluvanna’s field goal block for a touchdown.
Buckingham’s defense was able to get a lot of pressure on Fluvanna quarterback Ryan Foster, and the continued pursuit of the senior quarterback outside the pocket forced him into a number of tough plays.
“We got some pressure on him and we contained some runs,” said Buckingham linebacker Taylor Boyers. “The [defensive backs] played well too, they covered well.”
Fluvanna got solid play defensively for the most part, but the offense sputtered. That lack of execution and some untimely penalties — like the roughing the kicker — forced the defense to stay on the field a big chunk of the night.
“We’ve got to stop shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Fluvanna coach Rodney Redd. “We have some nice weapons offensively and every once in awhile you see some flashes of what we are able to do on the ground and out on the edges. We have just got to be able to execute.”
The Flucos finished with 98 yards of total offense, with sophomore wideout YaYa Anderson providing a bright spot with three catches for 41 yards.
The Knights will try and keep it going against Chatham next Friday while Fluvanna plays host to a red-hot Western Albemarle squad.
