Dothan falls short against Central

A potential season-changing win for Dothan came up 19 yards short.

The Tigers, who rallied from a 14-point deficit, fell 27-25 to Central-Phenix City when the Red Devils’ Taurance Bass intercepted a pass at the 1-yard line to preserve the win.

Dothan was down 27-13 with 9:47 left and rallied, scoring two touchdowns but missing on an extra point and 2-point play. The Tigers forced a punt and took over at their 20 with 3:35 left and drove 61 yards, but couldn’t get it done.

Dothan fell to 1-6, 1-4 in the region. Central improved to 4-3, 3-2.

“We’ve been competitive, but I’m not happy with being competitive, our coaches are not happy with being competitive and we’re trying to get our kids to not be happy with just being competitive,” first-year Dothan head coach Kelvis White said.

“We want to be winners. Not to say that we’re losers, but we’re not winners on the scoreboard yet.”

On the final drive, Lazaro Aguilar hit Devon Fields for 14 yards on the first play. Six plays later, the Tigers faced fourth down at midfield. They got a pass interference penalty and another one on the next play, giving Dothan the ball at the Central 20.

Aguilar gained a yard on first down, but he threw the interception with 47 seconds left. The senior, who came in at quarterback on the second series, ran 22 times for 104 yards and hit 9-of-19 passes for 166 yards.

He had normally rotated with junior Jay LeGrand, but LeGrand threw an interception on Dothan’s first drive and coaches stuck with Aguilar after that.

“(Aguilar) had the hot hand and we went with him,” White said. “Both of them are good quarterbacks, but we made the decision to go with Aguilar. He carried the load but just made a costly mistake at the end, but we can’t point fingers. We’re proud of him and the effort.”

Bass also blocked the extra point when Dothan cut the lead to 27-19. Central overcame 114 yards in penalties.

“Every time we got in the red zone, we got a penalty,” Central head coach Ron Nelson said. “We’ve got to be better coached than that and not make the penalty.

“We caught some big passes for some key first downs, but we ran it up and down between the 20s and we get a penalty. That happens on the road sometimes.”

Running back Orwin Smith led the Central ground attack with 112 yards. Deon Hill ran for 78.

Bronterrious Jakes set up Central’s first score with an interception. Smith took the shotgun snap and ran from two yards out. Dothan responded and tied the game at 7 with Aguilar’s 1-yard run.

Smith scored from 2 yards out with 7:40 left in the first half. Three minutes later, Aguilar’s pass hit Marcus Smith between two Central defenders and went for a 41-yard score, but Dothan was called for unsportsmanlike conduct. The 35-yard extra point try was short.

Central then went up 21-13 when Deont’e Swinton returned the ensuing kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown.

Central’s Cannon Elkins added field goals from 28 and 36 yards to push the lead to 27-13.

Dothan cut it to 27-19 when Brandon Knight ran in from 26 yards out. A penalty put the ball at the 1-and-a-half-yard line, but Dothan stuck with the point-after try, which was blocked.

“We have a chart we go by and we stick with that,” White said. “We don’t second-guess ourselves. We were going to kick.”

Central then fumbled the pooch kick, and Dothan’s Kenny Hunter recovered, setting up the final score, a 4-yard run by Aguilar after a 29-yard pass from Aguilar to Devon Fields.

The two-point pass was complete but stopped short of the end zone.

Still, it wasn’t the same Dothan team that Nelson had seen for the past several years. Dothan is still trying to get that winning edge after a 1-9 season last year.

“Dothan teams in the past might have quit in the second half,” Nelson said. “They didn’t quit, and that’s a credit to him and his staff.”