Noblesville broke through for its first win of the season on Friday, holding off host Franklin Central 20-13 in a Hoosier Crossroads Conference game that saw the Millers hold firm in the final two minutes.
Noblesville held a 14-7 lead for the majority of the game, until the Flashes scored a touchdown with 1:21 left in the fourth quarter. But the Millers blocked the extra point attempt, keeping them ahead 14-13.
Jayden Barrett recovered an onside kick for Noblesville. Eventually, Franklin Central forced the Millers to punt, but Greyson Addison pinned the Flashes back at their five-yard line. The game finished with Noblesville’s Mason Bohland intercepting a final FC pass at the 25-yard line, and he ran the ball into the end zone with the clock at zero.
“Our kids needed that,” said Millers coach Justin Roden. “Sometimes you win because you want to win a championship or you want to win because it’s a payback game. But for us, we just needed to win because we needed to build some confidence. We have good kids. We have a lot of younger players. We’re not going to be favored in the next three weeks, not going to be favored the rest of the season, so we just want to keep hanging around people like we did tonight and find a way to win.”
Franklin Central scored the first touchdown of the game, and threatened to score again in the first half, but Noblesville made a stand to prevent that. Roden believed that to be a turning point of the game.
“Everything that could’ve went wrong at the beginning went wrong,” said Roden. “We had a fumble, we turned the ball over. We could’ve been down 14-0 and it could’ve been ‘Woe is me, here we go.’ We make a big play, defensively get a stop. The defensive hold there when it was 7-0 was really big, I think just for the whole dynamic of the game.”
The Millers got on the board when they used a fake punt to get to the two-yard line. That allowed Jayden Barrett to easily run the ball into the end zone on the next play. Later, Aidan Richardson got Noblesville’s first pick six of the game, and that would get the Millers ahead 14-7 with 6:22 left in the second quarter. That would be the score until the game’s final minutes.
“We’ve been practicing a couple different fakes on punt for a while, and I’ve been waiting to run that for the right opportunity,” said Roden. “There’s lots of plays in games that kind of change momentum, but I think that fake there really energized the fans, energized the kids.”
Stats from the game were not available due to technical difficulties. They will run in the Reporter at a later date.
Noblesville is now 1-3 in HCC play and 1-5 overall. The Millers travel to Hamilton Southeastern next Friday.
