Devils welcome Bulldogs to South Georgia football

TIFTON — The North Gwinnett Bulldogs will not have fond memories of their first ever trip to South Georgia to play football. Playing for the first time in the history of the school south of Interstate 20, the Bulldogs were defeated by the Tift County Blue Devils 13-0 Friday night in the state Class AAAAA quarterfinals.

Tift will now advance to the state semifinals Saturday at the Georgia Dome. The Devils’ will play at 6 p.m. against the Roswell High Hornets. Roswell advanced with a 42-21 victory over the Houston County Bears.

The other semifinal at 9 p.m. will pit the Warner Robins Demons against the Peachtree Ridge Lions. Warner Robins advanced Friday with a 14-3 win over Norcross, while Peachtree Ridge defeated Stephenson by a 12-9 score.

North Gwinnett quarterback Michael Tamburo came in with 1,946 yards passing and 414 yards rushing on the year.

However the sophomore could never get on track against the Tift defense.

Pressured all night by the Devil defensive line, Tamburo ended the game with -43 yards rushing on 15 carries and only 45 yards passing. The sophomore completed 11-of-23 passes and was intercepted twice, once by Blake Reddick and the second time by Randy Parker.

“Our defense stepped it up tonight,” Tift head coach Jay Walls said. “Our defensive line did a great job of pressuring the quarterback and our secondary did a great job of covering the receivers.”

Tamburo and the North Gwinnett offense only had 60 total yards of total offense. The Bulldogs were completely shut down in the second half with -14 yards rushing and only two yards passing. North Gwinnett was also held without a first down in the second half.

Tamburo was pressured by a number of Tift defenders including Anthony Woods, Larry Bryant, Jeffery Searcy, Jarvis Jones, A.J. Brown, Cory Maddox and Shayon Green.

“We wanted to show them about South Georgia football,” Woods said after the game. “We got a good pass rush all night and we were able to keep the quarterback boxed up so he couldn’t run.”

While the Tift defense was stopping the Bulldogs, the Devil offense broke open a scoreless game with a 38-yard touchdown pass from Sean Baxley to Marqus King with 1:28 left in the third quarter.

“I was thinking when I caught it, we are going to the Dome,” King said.

The score was set up when Ricky Pierce recovered a Evan Gilles fumble.

“We came up with the big play when we had to on offense,” Walls said. “But we have all relied on our defense all year and they came up big for us again.”

Tift later added another score when Lanarius McKinley scored from six yards out on a run with 1:46 left in the contest. McKinley was called for excessive celebration on the play and it forced Charlie Edwards to kick the point after from 32 yards and it was wide left.

The touchdown was set up by Parker’s interception.

While North Gwinnett only managed 60 yards, Tift put up 200.

Kaream Hess had 92 yards rushing on 22 carries and caught seven passes for 29 yards.

Baxley was 17-for-25 passing for 116 yards.

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