Litany of errors, Carr’s big night bounces Myrtle Beach from playoffs

Four turnovers.

A critical dropped pass that may have gone for a long touchdown.

And a handful of painful penalties.

Basically, Myrtle Beach looked like it had traveled the length of the state. The Seahawks’ season ended with a 28-14 loss at Midland Valley in the Class AAA Lower State championship on Friday. Mickey Wilson’s squad fell one game short of its 11th state finals appearance, and with good reason.

“We just didn’t play well especially in the first half,” Wilson said. “We got going a little bit in the third quarter, but we just didn’t execute.”

In fact, it was pretty much the opposite for most of the game.

Quarterback Drayton Arnold spent much of the night running away from a ferocious Midland Valley pass rush, and partly as a result, was intercepted three times. He also fumbled the ball away in the second quarter while taking a blindside hit when — again, like most of the game — his receivers were blanketed by the Mustang defense.

Brandon Sinclair found the end zone twice and ran for 149 yards, but it paled in comparison to what Midland Valley tailback DreKwon Carr was able to do. The senior rushed for 262 yards and two touchdowns. He had a 64-yard scamper in the second quarter, the Mustangs’ only significant offense in that span, and then in the fourth quarter he eclipsed 2,000 rushing yards on the year.

It didn’t lead to some of the bigger point totals opposing teams have scored on the Seahawks this year, but it was enough.

“We saw film on them and we just took advantage of what we saw we could,” Carr said.

When he was spelled in the second half after suffering some cramping issues, back-up Jaquan McCorkle added 51 yards and two touchdowns of his own. Xavier Leaphart, a North-South selection at safety who will now need to be replaced from next week’s all-star game, closed it out with a first-down run after Midland Valley’s third interception in the closing moments.

Meanwhile, quarter Daniel Carr (DreKwon’s cousin), teamed up with receiver Ethan Ennis eight times for 95 yards, many of which equated to gut shots to the Myrtle Beach defense. He and the Mustangs also played turnover-free ball throughout.

Coupled with the defensive presence, Midland Valley’s already program-best season will continue on to next Saturday’s state championship against South Pointe.

“We thought it was going to be a high-scoring ball game,” Mustangs coach Rick Knight said. “I ain’t relaxed until there were 25 seconds left. ... We bent a lot. It was giving them time to score, at least.”

But the Seahawks never really did much outside of those two Sinclair touchdowns.

Midland Valley turned the tables on what had been a frenetic scoring pace for Myrtle Beach since the start of region play on Oct. 2. Starting with that win over Wilson — one that launched an eight-game winning streak following a 2-3 start to the season — Wilson’s team had scored at least five touchdowns every week. It went wild in the second half last week against No. 1 Hartsville to erase a large deficit and advance another round.

The Seahawks had their 10th consecutive season with at least 10 wins, and in the process, Arnold and Sinclair — the two Old Dominion verbal commitments — padded career numbers that included 103 passing touchdowns for Arnold and more than 5,000 rushing yards for Sinclair.

Both were also named to the North-South game, which will take place at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium next Saturday. That will have to be enough after an error-ridden game nearly as far away from home as the Seahawks could have possibly played.

“We left some plays out on the field,” Wilson said. “We had some stuff there where we couldn’t quite get it going. We had some opportunities. But we couldn’t take advantage of them.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2015 at 11:51 PM with the headline "Litany of errors, Carr’s big night bounces Myrtle Beach from playoffs."