TIFTON - A 31-yard touchdown pass from Griffin Collier to Brant Watson with 41 seconds left gave the Tift County Blue Devils a 35-28 win over the visiting Fitzgerald Purple Hurricanes.
The Friday night thriller saw the Devils up 20-7 in the fourth quarter. But Fitzgerald fought back to tie the game at 28-28 in the fourth. The tying score came on a Malik Balom 62-yard fumble recovery.
After a scoreless first quarter, Tift got on the board with a one-yard run by Brenton Jones. Damien Devine answered for the Hurricanes with a one-yard scoring run of his own.
Tift's Rosendo Ramirez ended the scoring in the first half with a 26-yard field goal as time expired.
Tift went up 17-7 early in the third when Collier hit Jones on a pretty 83-yard touchdown pass.
With 10:40 left in the game Ramirez added a 34-yard field goal to make the score 20-7.
Fitzgerald's Montrell Harris answered with a two-yard touchdown run.
Collier came back with a 15-yard scoring pass to Brant Watson. Collier caught a two-point conversion on a trick play.
Devine got the score to 28-21 in favor of Tift when he caught a 34-yard touchdown pass from James Graham.
Then Balom tied the game with his fumble recovery. That led to the Collier to Watson heroics to give Tift the win.
Collier was 17-for-28 passing for 289 yards. Jones had 23 carries for 121 yards rushing and caught two passes for 112 more yards. Watson caught four passes for 82 yards. Tift had 485 yards of offense in the game.
Fitzgerald's JD King had 27 carries for 177 yards rushing. Fitzgerald had only 88 yards of offense in the first half but ended with 365 in the game.
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