St. Andrews looking to avoid first-ever winless season in finale at Point

VALLEY, Ala. — The St. Andrews Knights football program has a chance to make history in their final game. Only, it’s history that’s not desirable to be changed.

With a loss to the Point Skyhawks, St. Andrews would finish 0-11 — its first winless season ever.

While history is on the Knights’ side, with their first road win as a program coming at Point in a 46-19 result on Oct. 21, 2017, they are 3-4 all-time against the Skyhawks and have lost the last three meetings.

St. Andrews will seek to change that when they take on Point at Ram Stadium on Saturday at noon.

“I’m excited to go to Point,” St. Andrews head coach Bob Curtin said. “Let’s hope history repeats itself. Maybe it’s our first-ever win this season. There (have) been about five games this year where I and the coaching staff have personally felt confident that we’re going to compete and could win. When it comes down to execution, though, that’s out of our hands. And I think the guys need to know we’re not going into this dominant Point football program. They’ve had some ups, they’ve had some downs, they’ve got one or two good wins, and they’ve played some teams hard. But we feel comfortable that we can compete.”

Point (3-7, 2-3 Appalachian Athletic Conference) heads into the matchup against St. Andrews (0-10, 0-5 AAC) on a four-game losing streak to Union, Reinhardt, Pikeville, and Faulkner (Ala.). In their first two contests, the Skyhawks fell to Bethel (Tenn.) and Valdosta St. before picking up a 20-17 win against Thomas, then being defeated at Lindsey Wilson. Following its bye week, Point picked up a 35-0 victory at Kentucky Christian and prevailed 33-31 over Bluefield (Va.) at home.

In its losses, Point has struggled offensively, averaging just 16 points. Turnovers have been a stumbling block for the Skyhawks to get through as they’ve done so 20 times, including eight interceptions thrown by starting quarterback Mitchell Gossett (1,030 passing yards, 11 touchdowns).

The Skyhawks have four running backs that they involve — Sensir Carnes (78 rushes, 361 yards), Trey Inge III (63 rushes, 248 yards), D’ontae Eatmon (34 rushes, 144 yards), and Trey Turner (38 rushes, 134 yards) — with the 217-pound Eatmon being the one that impresses Curtin the most out of the bunch.

“We’ve got to focus on that really good running back (Eatmon),” Curtin said. “He’s big, he’s strong, and our D-line struggles a little bit in the run game because they’re so young, and they’re a little bit undersized.”

Out of the foursome of backs, only Eatmon and Turner have scored, with each finding the end zone once. That’s because star wide receiver Emery Bryant (51 receptions, 900 yards) has caught 11 TDs, and freshman WR Kareem Keye (28 receptions, 394 yards) has grabbed three.

And a young secondary could pose a problem for the Knights in trying to contain Bryant.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to always double (Bryant) just simply because now we’re leaving something else open, and we’re asking a young guy to do something else somewhere else that he may not have normally been asked,” Curtin said. “But we’ll have our cover three, cover four packages, we’ll do a little clout — we’ll do some different things to give looks that hopefully make the quarterback and the receiver pause for a second; that might just be what we need. But he’s a very talented receiver.”

Linebacker Kemorion Larkin (17 1/2 tackles for loss, seven sacks) has more than double the next-best tackler on the Skyhawks with 101 tackles (62 solo); DB Caleb Wade follows behind Larkin with 50 tackles (30 solo) and has a team-leading four interceptions. Other notable players on defense for Point are LBs Ethan Binns (46 tackles) and Cortez Thomas (38 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, four sacks, two interceptions) and defensive linemen Kassidy Deans (17 tackles, 5 1/2 tackles for loss), James Bryant (11 tackles, seven tackles for loss), and Tyrone Tumblin (10 tackles, 5 1/2 tackles for loss).

Despite some productive players, the Skyhawks defense has allowed 34.9 points per game, giving Curtin optimism that his team can put up more points than their average of 8.4 per game.

“If we don’t score any points or we don’t score more points than them, we can’t win,” Curtin said. “We’ve been shut out three times this year. And every one of those games that we’ve been shut out and went scoreless, not only were we winless, but it was our fault. It wasn’t a great defensive stop. It wasn’t a great defensive effort. It was the offense fumbling the ball, throwing an interception, taking a penalty, a terrible snap.”

The complications on offense have warranted Curtin to rotate QBs throughout the last two games, starting with Darius Holly and then turning to Jalen Dodd, who was the Knights’ starter to begin the year.

Curtin said he plans on continuing to roll with it again this weekend.

“I think you can see the same,” Curtin said. “We’ll start with Darius, and if he starts running the table on us, we’re going to ride the winning end. But if we see some opportunity, whether we’re blowing them out or getting blown out, which we hope is the latter, we’ll bring in Dodd. We need a guy that can get under center, get in pistol and shotgun, and there’s no change. Darius does that well, and Jalen does that well.”

Last season, the Knights and the Skyhawks played each other twice, with the first meeting being a nonconference game on Oct. 1, 2022, which was a 48-6 win for the Skyhawks in Alabama. Point also defeated St. Andrews in AAC play on Nov. 12, 2022, with a 27-16 final in Laurinburg.