Mountain Brook defeats Austin 31-22

Two region champs going at it tonight in decatur..

Moutain brook visiting austin max, these two head coaches are the winninest in their program's history, so i know it was a good game tonight.

Lynden -- the black bears are region champs for the first time since 2017 and had already punched their ticket to the playoffs before this game with an 8 and 1 record -- but had one final regular season test and it wasn't an easy one.... in the first it's quincy crittendon -- escaping the pocket and giving defenders the shakes as he fights his way into the endzone to put the black bears on the board first.

With austin up by 10 -- mountain brook is on the return -- james barron fields this one and makes one move before its off to the races -- it looks like he's home free on this long long run but gets knocked out just before he can hit paydirt.

His team picks him up on the next play at strother gibbs finds a wide open turner welsh for six... and the spartans cut the lead to three -- heading into the second half trailing 10 to 7.... the spartans would tie the game at 10 in the third and then take the lead as gibbs hits christopher wright who's just able to get the ball across the line and put mountain brook ahead.

And they'd never look back... later in the fourth its gibbs again, this time on the ground -- not even a handful of jersey can stop him from taking this one home from the otherside of the 50.

The bears would fight back but drop this one 31-22... after the game austin head coach jeremy perkins said of course they wanted to come away with the win, but it won't impact much since they already had a playoff spot clinched, but they'll be able to make some adjustments.... 1:10 - 1:30 jeremy perkins -- athens head coach "i mean we've gotta learn to finish things, we had a couple drives in the first half where we stalled in the red zone and didnt finish the drive, turned the ball over way too much, so we gotta do a better job protecting the football and then we've gotta play better on special teams -- we got hurt some in the kicking game."

Perkins said they'll see next week how much they were able to take away from this loss as they head into the first round of the playoffs -- live at austin high school, max cohan,