Griffith junior Cole Cervantes hadn’t touched the ball all game. The 5-foot-10 wide receiver finally got an opportunity when senior quarterback Fred Winston lofted a pass high into the end zone.
Cervantes wasn’t going to waste his chance.
“We were running the ball well,” Cervantes said of his quiet night up to that point. “But I just knew it was my ball and I was going to catch it.”
His 23-yard touchdown reception Friday proved to be the decisive points as Griffith knocked off Morton 35-21 at home in a Class 4A Sectional 17 semifinal.
Griffith (10-1) built a 21-point lead in the first half, only to watch Morton (8-3) tie the score just a few minutes into the third quarter.
But the Panthers withstood that rally and added a pair of late TDs to setup a sectional championship game against Lowell.
“For the three years that I’ve had this group, they’ve done a phenomenal job flushing bad plays and moving on to the next one,” Griffith coach Ben Geffert said.
The points came early and often for Griffith.
The Panthers scored on first three possessions on drives of 64, 61 and 63 yards. The big plays came from a few of Griffith’s lesser-known weapons, with senior Anthony Compton scoring on a 38-yard catch and junior Ernest Johnson adding a 32-yard TD catch.
Morton’s fortunes changed after a miscue. Compton blocked a punt early in the second quarter, but the ball landed in the hands of Morton junior Timothy Johnson. He ran 10 yards to pick up the Governors’ initial first down of the game.
Four plays later, the Governors scored on an 11-yard TD reception by Kashon Prather. He scored again near the end of the first half, this time a 20-yard reception. He added a third TD on a 51-yard catch that forced a 21-21 tie early in the third quarter.
Prather finished seven catches for 132 yards.
“He’s done that all year,” Morton coach Sean Kinney said. “They did a good job of keeping our run game in check early. When they got up, we needed to make plays and we did that to get back in the game.”
Morton’s final scoring threat came early in the fourth quarter, when a 33-yard reception by sophomore Brendan Jones moved the Governors to the Griffith 22.
But Morton lost yards on first and second down, and that drive ended with an incomplete pass on fourth down. The Governors would not get that close to the end zone again.
With three minutes left, Winston broke loose for a 51-yard run to put the Panthers in the red zone. Senior running back Kadafi Coleman then put the game away with a 9-yard TD run.
Winston, who passed for 148 yards, finished with 115 yards rushing.
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
