Erik Larson hands off to Josh Smith.
- photo by Greg Davick

The Tennessee Temple Crusader football team didn't lead their second round Class A playoff football game against Trousdale County Friday night until the final minute. A miracle two-point conversion, their first of the night, by Crusader quarterback Erik Larson gave Temple their only lead - and the win, 32-31.

Touchdown runs by Blake Satterfield in the first and second quarter, plus a 32-yard field goal gave Trousdale County a 17-0 lead.

The undefeated Crusaders finally got on the scoreboard with 7:15 left when Joey Skogen scrambled for 37 yards and a touchdown. With 1:50 left in the half, Dee Newsom caught an Erik Larson pass for 57 yards and a touchdown, but both the kick on the first touchdown and the two-point conversion attempt on the second failed, making the halftime score 17-12.

Trousdale opened the scoring in the third quarter with a 12-yard run by Satterfield, giving them a 24-12 lead with 6:01 left in the third.

A long pass to Seth Skogen brought the Crusaders to the three-yard line, but penalties moved Temple back out of the red zone. That didn't stop the Crusaders as Larson hit Seth Skogen for a nine-yard pass with 2:08 left. Again the two-point conversion failed.

Temple fumbled the ball at the end of the third quarter, but came up big on defense stopping Trousdale on fourth down. Another big play to Seth Skogen set up a Joey Skogen run for 18 yards and a touchdown. The failed kick tied the game at 24.

Dee Newsom recovered an onside kick, but Trousdale's defense stopped Temple on 4th and 3 on the six-yard line with 4:51 left.

Trousdale continued to pound the ball, marching to the six-yard line before Satterfield took one around the end for a touchdown. The extra point gave the visitors a 31-24 lead with just 1:44 left in the game.

Temple's final attempt to pull off the miracle win started with Joey Skogen taking the kickoff back to the Temple 49-yard line. Larson scrambled on the next play for 19 yards.

With 1:07 left, Seth Skogen went up for another one of Larson's long passes and came down with the ball in the end zone making the score 31-30.

With little confidence in the kicking game, Temple set up for a two-point conversion. Trousdale used both the remaining timeouts to ice Temple.

With both teams' fans on their feet, Erik Larson received the ball in the shotgun and rolled to the left, but could not find a receiver open. Larson made a quick decision to run the ball and punched it in for the game winning points.

Temple's defense held Trousdale for the final minute with the last pass going out of bounds as time ran off the clock.

Trousdale's defense held Seth Skogen to eight catches, but those eight were for 123 yards. Most of those eight catches were game changing.

Larson was 12 of 23 for 225 yards.

Temple moves to 12-0 on the season and will travel to top-ranked Friendship Christian next Friday.

Joey Skogen cuts back.
- Photo2 by Greg Davick