Picayune’s quest for a three-peat ends with 42-13 South State loss at West Jones
Picayune couldn’t find a way out once the hole was dug.
The Maroon Tide had its hunt for a three-peat denied by West Jones in the 6A South State championship game on Friday, 42-13.
The hosting Mustangs thundered out to a 28-0 first-half lead and never let the back-to-back state champs back into the game.
“That was a really good football team, they’re well coached and they got some dudes over there,” Maroon Tide coach Cody Stogner said of the Mustangs. “We just couldn’t get anything going on offense.”
Emotions ran high and spilled over on the PHS sideline after each fruitless Tide possession. The same dosage of relentless defense the Maroon Tide have been used to doling out was administered by a vengeful Mustangs squad.
West Jones had its 2022 season come to an end at the hands of the Tide in the postseason and it hasn’t lost since that night.
The Mustangs used a litany of big plays to cut holes in the PHS defense. Rase Jones scored three touchdowns for WJHS, one a 40-yard fumble returned for six and two more on the ground that were set up by runs of 78 and 72 yards.
“We played a good team, tonight,” Picayune quarterback Brady Robertson said. “We could have very easily laid down (at halftime), but we came back and fought through it. We got out tail whooped, it is what it is.”
Robertson threw a 23-yard touchdown pass last in the first half to Brandon Parker, but a couple of Mustang scores in the third quarter presented the Tide with a situation they had never been in under Stogner: on the wrong side of a running clock.
Niquis Ratcliff scored PHS’s lone rushing touchdown from the goal line on the final play from scrimmage. Ratcliff got the bulk of the carries due to star tailback Chris Davis being unavailable and an early injury knocking out Darrell Smith.
The loss snapped a 10-game playoff win streak for the Maroon Tide.
Impactful seniors moving on
A deep class of seniors left its final mark on the Maroon Tide program. Robertson, the top-ranked prospect in the state in Jamonta Waller and the Coast’s active leader in career tackles in Amarion Tyson are just a few of the long list of upperclassmen who built the most successful era in school history.
Picayune won 47 games, three district titles and two state championships during its four-year run.
“This senior class is the best class ever to come through Picayune Memorial High School,” Stogner said. “I’m forever indebted to those guys because of what they’ve done, not just for the program, but for the community of Picayune... we’re going to miss a lot of those guys.”
Both Stogner and Robertson are confident the players filling in will continue to uphold the standard created by Stogner’s first class.
“I feel like next year our guys will fight,” Robertson said. “Because that’s what we do. We fight.”
Though the rest of the state will witness a new team crowned champion in Oxford next week, PHS will continue to prepare as if the target never left its back.
“The standard is set pretty high at Picayune with what these guys have done the last three years,” Stogner said. “The target is on our back and we welcome the challenge. That just means we have to work harder and prepare better to make sure incidents like this don’t happen again.”
Elsewhere around the Coast, Poplarville fell 28-21 to Columbia in the 4A semifinal round while Gautier lost 31-10 in the 5A semifinal.
This will be the first season since 2010 the Coast will not be represented in the state championships games.
