Page 14 - Florida Sentinel 12-5-17

Sports
Armwood Will Represent Tampa In The FHSAA Football Finals
Jameis Winston Finds That
The Armwood High School Hawks will return to the FHSAA Class 6A champi- onship game for the fifth time in six times after beating St. Augustine 30-6 on Friday night. Armwood (14-0) will be the only representative in the Tampa area (Seffner) par- ticipating in this week’s foot- ball state championship games at Camping World Stadium in Orlando.
The Hawks will play Miami Northwestern in the 6A title game next Friday at 8 p.m., the game will be tele- vised on Spectrum 47.
Quarterback Devin Black threw three touch- down passes, one to Warren Thompson, a commit to Oregon (Willie Taggart’s job status pending) and an- other to Brian Snead, who will be playing his college football at Ohio State. Black’s third touchdown pass went to super-junior Wayne Black. who is al-
credited with a state champi- onship since 2004. The Hawks defeated Miami Cen- tral in 2011 but both teams were later disqualified for FHSAA rules violations thus erasing the existence of the game.
The news wasn’t so good for the Henry B. Plant High School Panthers, who lost a 34-29 heartbreaker to Bar- tram Trail in a contest played on the St. John’s/Duval County line. The Panthers trailed 28-7 at halftime but quarterback Jordan Mc- Cloud led a Panthers rally that got within five when he scored on a two-point con- version with less than a minute remaining. Plant, however, failed to recover the onside kick and will fail to reach their seventh football final in 11 years. We will hear from McCloud again, how- ever, when he signs with the USF Bulls in a couple of months.
Deondre Francois Appears To Rip Jimbo Fisher For Manner Of Departure
DEONDRE FRANCOIS
It appears that Jimbo Fisher’s departure from Florida State may not have been handled particularly well.
Quarterback Deondre Francois took to Twitter on Friday and offered a message that certainly seems to have been directed at his coach, who is departing for Texas A&M immediately.
Francois was Florida State’s starting quarterback, but missed almost the entire season after suffering a patella tendon injury in the season opener. It’s a pretty poor way to go out if Fisher did indeed walk away from the team with- out reaching out to anyone — perhaps questions like this one were entirely valid.
Many In Loss To Packers
UCF Players Overwhelmed With Emotion As They Savor Winning Wild AAC Championship Game
ready big enough to play in college but will have to wait another year.
Running back Jerome Ford, a recruiting target for USF and Louisville among others, returned a punt for a touchdown. The Hawks de- fense, which features roughly a dozen college prospects, ha- rassed St. Augustine’s poor quarterback all night. Had his name been on the back of his jersey, it would have been covered in grass stains and dirt.
Armwood hasn’t been
If Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers shows any- thing, it's that for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it may always be a mixed bag with star quarterback Jameis Winston. He'll give you some big-time plays, but also will make some amazingly poor decisions, such as the one Sunday that led to a lost fumble and a 26-20 overtime loss.
He spent three weeks on the sideline watching veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick lead the team to two wins by taking few risks. Yet Winston's fumble in the sec- ond quarter Sunday showed that he has failed to absorb one of the most important lessons a quar- terback can learn, something he continues to fail at in his third year in the NFL: knowing when a play is dead.
Under duress, Winston coughed up the ball as he was being taken down, resulting in a fumble recovery returned 62 yards by Dean Lowry for a touchdown. It was first-and-10. Winston should have taken the sack and lived to see another play. Instead, the Packers ex- tended their lead to 17-7.
"I don't even know how the ball came out," Winston said. "I think when I ran back, I think I hit a guy's butt or something. I don't even know. I just know I was going out to the right, trying to actually throw it away, but I think when I ran back, I hit someone. ... I had Cameron Brate on a route in front of me so I was about to throw it in front of him."
"It really did [feel like it was going to be a good day]. It really was," Brate said. "We just kind of killed ourselves, whether it was sacks -- those kind of killed our momentum, a couple calls didn't go our way, the turnover - - those killed us. ... Ultimately we
Dean Lowry drops Jameis Winston for a huge loss on third down sack.
shot ourselves in the foot."Ear- lier in the game, on the opening drive, Winston hit Brate down the seam for a 28-yard touch- down, the first time the Bucs had scored a touchdown on an open- ing drive all year. For a unit that has struggled with slow starts, that was huge progress. He'd hit Brate again for a game-tying touchdown in the fourth quarter, another plus.
Winston's fumble, plus two Tampa Bay fumbles at the goal line, were unacceptable. You can't pin that all on Winston when he was in the middle of changing a protection and the ball is snapped, but this team has to have more composure in high-pressure situations, Win- ston included.
To be fair, Winston didn't find out until Sunday that he would be taking snaps from Evan Smith, a backup guard. Backup center Joe Hawley was to step in for starting center Ali Marpet, who landed on injured reserve this week, but Hawley came down with an illness.
"I don't think I had my hands under Evan in about a year," Winston admitted. "We had like two miscommunications and we just found out today that this was gonna be our offensive line. We did not think we'd be in this situation today. This was a game-time decision."
One Poor Decision Is One Too
As he stood in the center of a black and gold confetti rain shower, UCF quarter- back McKenzie Milton tried his best to choke back the tears just moments after helping No. 14 UCF defeat No. 20 Memphis 62-55 in double overtime for the American Athletic Confer- ence championship.
Last year, Milton was a freshman quarterback struggling to find his place on and off the field almost 5,000 miles away from his home in Hawaii.
This year, he helped the Knights develop into one of the most prolific offenses in the nation.
And that talent was on display, again, as Milton
broke multiple records and hearts across Memphis to punch UCF’s ticket to the New Year’s Day bowl game.
He connected on 28 of 40 passes for a season-high 494 passing yards and five touchdowns delivered to Dredrick Snelson, Tre’Quan Smith and Jor- dan Akins.
During the win, Milton set two school records for touchdown passes during a single season (35) and pass- ing yards in a season (3,795). Both records, previ- ously held by Ryan Schneider, date back to 2002.
Milton was voted the most outstanding player of the game.
Willie Taggart Denies Florida State Contact, Dodges Questions About Future
Oregon coach Willie Tag- gart may be the leading candi- date for the Florida State job, but for now, he’s trying to avoid all that speculation.
Taggart said Friday that the Seminoles had not con- tacted him about their vacant coaching position, offering something of a flippant denial when talk of the position came
up. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m the football coach,” Taggart said Friday when asked if he’d be back at Oregon next season, via Safid Deen of the Orlando Sentinel. “You guys are asking me like you’re trying to get me out of here or something.”
When asked if Florida State had contacted him about the vacancy, Taggart responded
WILLIE TAGGART
“no, so can we move on now?” Understandably, Taggart would rather duck these ques- tions for now. He may be the reported top candidate, but the Seminoles are still getting their list of priorities together after Jimbo Fisher’s departure. He doesn’t have a lot to say right now — though there is defi- nitely some reason to ask where
his future lies.
PAGE 14 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017