Evans:‘I wasn’t letting this go’

LITTLE ROCK — Junction City wide receiver Jarkell Brown leaned his lanky torso back in midair and grazed quarterback Shaquille Hunter’s Hail Mary pass with a swat from his right hand.

Brown’s blind faith was rewarded.

Darting behind three members of the Bearden secondary, receiver Dorian Evans came up with the tipped ball for the winning touchdown Friday night in a 27-26 victory in the Class 2A state championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

As the ball fluttered, Bearden free safety Quentin Wilson still had a chance to snuff out the Dragons’ hopes for a fourth state title since 2003. But Evans was a split second quicker, grabbing the ball for a 30-yard touchdown reception with no time left.

“Just a great feeling,” Evans said.

Junction City nearly blew its chance moments earlier during its 67-yard game-winning drive that began with 53 seconds left.

With no timeouts and 23.6 seconds left, Hunter tucked the ball away on a quarterback draw on second-and-4 from the 30 and was quickly wrapped up by linebacker Jameko Lowe. Rather than go down quickly, Hunter fought for extra yardage as precious seconds ran off the clock.

With roughly 10 seconds left, Hunter tried to hurry his teammates to the line of scrimmage and spiked the ball with 0.9 seconds left.

“It was scary,” Evans said. “Looking up at the clock, I thought it was going to run out on us.”

Junction City Coach David Carpenter was trying to make sense of it all as well.

“There’s so many little things running through your head that you don’t really know what’s going on,” he said.

So, Carpenter went with the obvious. He called for a Hail Mary.

“We just go down there and try to chunk it and hope one of them catches it,” Carpenter said.

Working out of the shotgun, Hunter had three receivers to his right with Brown working out of the slot and Evans to the outside. Hunter took the snap and rolled to the wide side of the field before flinging the ball toward the end zone.

Brown jumped between Bearden’s Wilson, Lowe and Daniel Williams in the end zone, trying to punch the ball upward so the trailing receiver might be able to come in and make the catch.

“Nobody was keeping me from getting my hand on it,” Brown said.

Carpenter said he didn’t see Evans at first. Neither did Hunter, but he saw Evans come away with it.

“I wasn’t letting this go,” Evans said.

Hunter raced upfield to a mob of Junction City players celebrating in the south end zone. Evans, still holding the ball, was wrapped up in a hug from Junction City quarterbacks coach Kendall Hutcheson before split end Marlon Brown grabbed Evans and lifted him skyward.

“Let them know it’s so, boy!” running back Sam Williams yelled.

Asked later what he planned to do with the ball, Evans simply smirked.

“I’m going to sleep with this tonight.”