By MONTE DUTTON

Watch what you ask for. You might just get it.

You may recall that last week I wrote a column when I realized had not witnessed in person a single close game all year.

Jesus must have thought that a prayer.

My pulse rate is only now descending to normal. In the final minute and 43 seconds on Friday night, Clinton High tied a record shared by many, scoring from 99-plus yards distant to come within a damnable point of Chapman. The two-point conversion failed, but it was about as entertaining as a penalty-plagued football game can be. I think it’s safe to write that the Red Devils have a hankering to play the Panthers again, and it’s not just confined to the ones in uniform on the field.

If it’s possible — and I know coaches who believe it isn’t — to gain more from a defeat than a victory, the Red Devils did it.

And, then, Saturday in Spartanburg, I was hoping the Blue Hose just kept it respectable. After Presbyterian’s 23-20, damn-near-miracle victory, the players stayed long on the field to celebrate. As they ran up the hill to their locker room, they were screaming about all the people who didn’t respect them, and as they ran past, I thought, guilty, your honor

It was wonderful. It was something my old man would’ve called “the damndest thing ever I see’d.”

The game could’ve been a movie called The Greatest Game Ever Played. It reminded me of books I read as a kid with names like All-Time Greatest College Football Upsets. I remember that Centre College of Kentucky upset somebody great. (Hang on. It was Harvard, 6-0, in 1921.)

Wofford is 0-3, but the Terriers tossed a shutout in football scholarships. Silly me. I thought it would make a difference.

Wofford grew frantic, acting as if winning big was more important than winning at all. The Blue Hose scrambled, like golfers who keep salvaging pars out of the rough. The Terriers led for most of the second half but couldn’t shake PC. The winning drive was out of Disney: three fourth-down conversions, one via a roughing-the-passer penalty that nullified an interception, the final one resulting in the game-winning score from Wesley to Worth Warner for 18 yards with 28 seconds left.

It was, however, no fluke. PC won the stats and the game. It was a miracle but not a fluke. Does that make sense? Of course not.

On Presbyterian’s first offensive play, Tyler Wesley hit Devarius Abercrombie on a 66-yard flea flicker. It was a classic opening. Hit ‘em hard just to remind ‘em we play tackle.

Naturally, I was monitoring the action in Kennesaw, Ga., on my trusty laptop in the Gibbs Stadium press box. Furman started an hour earlier, and, of course, won on a last-minute drive, 31-28.

I laugh every time I see the clip of Tyler Huff, dashing into the end zone and being knocked down several yards into it. Huff popped up, walked up to the tackler, stuck his chest out and signaled touchdown. No late hit was called – somehow the end zone is different from the sideline – but Huff drew a flag for excessive celebration. It was worth it. Vintage Huff. He became the first Paladin quarterback ever to rush for four touchdowns in a single game.

I got home, wrote about the Blue Hose and Terriers, and watched Colorado play Colorado State. The Buffaloes needed overtime to defeat a rival, and it played like a rivalry. Rules do not allow football games to be played so aggressively anymore. Neither team cared. I’ve never seen so many people on the sidelines, many of them representing stage, screen and musical artistry. I’m glad I wasn’t trying to take photos.

I’d write more, but I don’t know anything about anything else that happened over the weekend.

Photo galleries are posted on Instagram, @laurenscountysports and @furmanatt.

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