Fight ends Linden, Wilcox game

LINDEN — Linden (5-0) outpaced Wilcox-Central 47-8 Thursday night before the game was called following a sizable altercation between the teams with 1:31 to go in the third quarter.

“All I know is we can evaluate the situation and see the fact that hopefully our kids made the right decisions. It’s a situation that you don’t see and you don’t prepare for that kind of situation so you’ve just got to evaluate the system and go from there,” Linden head coach Andro Williams said following the contest. “Hope and pray that our kids did the right thing in the situation at hand. If we get in that situation again, we’ll handle it accordingly.”

The incident occurred after Marquise Shelton reeled off a 17-yard run along the WCHS sideline down to the Wilcox 10. The altercation lasted several minutes and resulted in the officials signaling for 32 total ejections before the decision was made to call the game.

Williams, whose team had no players leave the bench area during the melee, said he and his staff would evaluate the film of the incident in an effort to determine what disciplinary action should be taken regarding the incident.

Williams indicated he was surprised by the incident and saw no considerable extracurricular activity over the course of the game that would have pointed toward such an altercation occurring.

“You saw one or two things but that’s sort of within the course of the ballgame,” Williams said. “Hopefully the kids can control the situation. The game wasn’t a game that was in hand one way or another.”

The officials signaled 16 ejections for each team before providing only nine numbers of ejected players to Williams. Following a lengthy discussion regarding which players were no longer in the game, the decision was made to call the contest.

Shelton’s run stood as the final play of a game that Linden dominated from the outset. The Patriots needed only four plays from scrimmage to take an early lead on a 22-yard scoring run by Anthony Robinson.

Shelton found the end zone on the next drive, capping a six-play, 75-yard march with a four-yard end zone jaunt.

Linden upped its advantage again with 3:19 to play in the first quarter when Robinson scored on a seven-yard run, an opportunity he created himself with a 33-yard scamper two plays earlier.

With the Pats up 20-0, the Linden defense squashed a Jaguar rushing attempt in the end zone for a safety to add to the total only 19 seconds after Robinson’s second touchdown run.

Linden scored again two plays later when Jalen Lewis hit paydirt on a 29-yard run.

Wilcox got on the board midway through the second quarter when Jarvis Ross reeled off a 62-yard scoring sprint. Jaguar quarterback Jordon Ross then his Quantavian Phillips for the two-point conversion play to cut it to 28-8.

Prentiss McQuiston later scored on a one-yard run before Lewis found the end zone again on an 11-yard run to end the half.

Robinson scored the game’s final touchdown with 10:55 to play in the third quarter on a 62-yard interception return for a score. Lewis later added a second Linden interception on a 3rd and 37 heave from Wilcox.