Langston Hughes is 1-0. Again.
The “one game at a time” mantra has been at the forefront of the program’s one-year turnaround, and it worked again Friday in the first round of the Class 6A playoffs, as the Panthers easily took apart one of the state’s blueblood programs, Northside-Warner Robins, 27-0.
After finishing 2-8 last season, the first for head coach Daniel Williams, Friday’s win moved Hughes, the No. 2 seed from Region 4, to 10-1. The Panthers’ last loss was October 16 to region champion Westlake, 26-21. Williams said even after that loss, he could see his team rounding into shape.
“Our kids have bought in to everything we’ve been telling them, and we’ve been telling them that our main goal is to go 1-0 every week,” Williams said. “Since Westlake, we’ve been 1-0 six times.”
Friday’s win was quick and efficient, as the Panthers scored all their points in the first two quarters. Hughes went up 7-0 after its first offensive possession when freshman quarterback Air Noland hit senior Maquez Cowins on a crossing route and Cowins sprinted 51 yards through the Eagle’s secondary for a touchdown.
Northside-Warner Robins committed the first of its five turnovers on the night, when the Eagles fumbled in their own territory on their first offensive possession. Hughes capitalized when Noland scored the first of his two short touchdown runs in the first half – one from 3 and one from 5-yards out.
Hughes’ last score of the night came on a 5-yard touchdown pass from Noland to Terrance Love, set up earlier by a long pass to Cowins.
“We saw some things on film, some gaps we thought we could exploit,” Williams said. “Our guys listened to what we were telling them all week and came out tonight and made plays.”
The Eagle offense finally showed some signs of life just before halftime on some nice inside zone runs by Micah Turman. But Hughes junior safety Rodney Shelley ended the drive when came off the hash mark and picked off a pass from junior Elijah Robinson in the end zone with a little more than a minute left in the second quarter.
Things didn’t get any better for the Northside-Warner Robins offense in the second half as the Panther front seven – led by senior Kheon Hood (two sacks), juniors Garrett Wilson and Kintavious Williams, and sophomores Aiden Watkins and Kaleb Raston – stuffed run lanes and harassed Robinson in the pocket. When he did have time to throw, Shelley and rest of the Panthers’ secondary unit – led by junior Lataj Wright and senior Charles Arnold (two interceptions) – were up to the task.
Along with picking up a playoff win over a perennial playoff team, Hughes showed another sign of a program that looks ready to move to the next level: maturity. Late in the fourth quarter junior quarterback Xavier Smith took a brutal but completely legal hit along the sideline on a designed quarterback run. But the players didn’t respond immediately after the play, which would have most likely drawn a personal foul penalty and possibly a suspension for the next round of the playoffs. Instead, on the Panthers’ next offensive possession, offensive linemen Sherman Turner, a junior, and Arelious Dunn, a senior, aggressively finished a double-team block on a Northside-Warner Robins defender and buried him 15 yards down the field.
“Our guys grew up a little more tonight,” Williams said. “We always want to make sure we play physical. They saw their teammate take a good shot, and they gave one right back, but they kept it fair, between the whistles. It’s one of the things we have been teaching them and they have bought in.”
