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#14 Bethel claims Mid-South title with 31-20 win over Shorter
By Matt Green
ROME -- With a conference championship up for grabs, it was Bethel University that took full advantage of its opportunity.
The 14th-ranked Wildcats got 134 yards and two touchdowns from tailback Cordarious Mann and scored two special teams touchdowns en route to a 31-20 victory over Shorter on Saturday afternoon at Historic Barron Stadium.
Bethel's win coupled with the University of the Cumberlands' upset of 20th-ranked Cumberland University means that the Wildcats (8-2, 5-1 Mid-South) are the Mid-South Conference West Division champions and will represent the conference in the NAIA Football Championship Series that begins next week.
"Our players played very hard, but we made far too many mistakes," said Shorter head coach Phil Jones. "You can't do that against a good football team. I think it was a battle that could have gone either way, but we made enough mistakes to keep us from getting into a winning situation."
Shorter (6-4, 3-3) comes up just short in its bid for a second conference title. A win on Saturday for Shorter would have resulted in a four-way tie for the West Division crown.
But costly mistakes at inopportune times doomed a Shorter team that outgained Bethel 299-278 and held onto the football for seven minutes longer than the Wildcats.
Bethel got on the board first when Anthony Debonis scooped up a punt blocked by Kyle Whiteman and returned it 16 yards for a 7-0 lead.
For the third time this year, a team returned the second half kickoff all the way for a score -- this time it was Bethel's Patrick Mann that raced 90 yards to paydirt to open the third quarter and put the Wildcats up 21-13.
The final momentum swing came when Shorter's Brandon Morten was stuffed on a fourth and two from the Bethel 5 late in the third quarter, a turnover on downs that Bethel turned into a 14-play, 92-yard scoring drive capped by Mann's 4-yard run that staked the Wildcats an insurmountable 28-13 lead with 13:17 remaining in the fourth period.
"The blocked punt hurt and the kickoff return hurt," said Jones. "They ran a twist on that punt that we hadn't seen before and then we give up a kickoff return after our kids came out excited for that second half.
"Not making it on that fourth down is my fault," Jones added. "We have to be able to put our kids in a position to make that play. I feel responsible for that, but I am so proud of this team and its effort."
The Hawks made one final push in the fourth quarter when Cory Thacker connected with Collin Wooddy on a 4-yard TD pass with 6:16 left to draw Shorter within 28-20, but Bethel embarked on a 10-play, 89-yard drive -- the drive was kept alive by a 28-yard completion from quarterback Wil Masoud to Michael Newbern on a third and three from the Bethel 32 -- capped by Tim Donegan's 36-yard field goal with 1:42 left to put the Wildcats ahead 31-20.
C.J. Scott led Shorter offensively with 54 yards on 12 carries. He scored on a 25-yard run with 21 seconds left in the first quarter to tie the game at 7 and senior David Byrd scored on a 5-yard run with 3:12 left in the first half to give Shorter its first lead at 13-7.
But Mann, who picked up 5.4 yards a carry and became just the second running back to eclipse 100 yards rushing on the Hawks this season, scored from a yard out on fourth and goal with 17 seconds left until halftime to give Bethel a 14-13 lead it would never relinquish.
Bethel improved to 4-2 all-time against Shorter and reversed the fortune of the 2008 showdown between the two teams. Shorter won a 7-0 slugfest in Tennessee three years ago on the final day of the regular season to win its first conference championship and advance to the national playoffs.
It wasn't in the cards for the Hawks on this day. Masoud completed 13 of 15 passes for 140 yards and was a main reason for Bethel's 6-for-12 efficiency on third downs. Shorter sacked Masoud three times -- senior Daniel Hazard had two of those sacks -- but the 6-foot-7 signal caller made the throws when he had to and Bethel rode the legs of Mann to an outright conference championship.
Playing in his final game as a Hawk, Hazard made a career-high 15 tackles. Junior Demery Hawkins finished with 11 stops and concludes the season with 110 tackles, the second-highest single-season total in program history behind Logan Lollis' 113 tackles during Shorter's championship run in 2008.
Although Shorter's aspirations of another conference championship weren't realized on Saturday, Jones was plenty proud of what this team accomplished and is looking forward to what the future holds.
"We have so many leaders on this team that carried on the tradition we are building here," said Jones, reflecting on Shorter's fifth winning season in seven years as a program. "I think we will bounce back and be a good football program. It will be a tough road in respect to where we are going next.
"It is unknown territory at this point, but as long as we have the kind of kids we do, we will put it all together and keep going."
