By John Raffel
It doesn’t happen very often that an MHSAA state championship football game is decided on the final play. In fact, it’s only happened twice since the state started having state finals in 1975.
Unfortunately for Lowell (12-2), the Red Arrows were on the losing end of the most recent last-play miracle. Armando Posey threw a 40-yard pass to Donnie Conley for the winning touchdown with no time left in Detroit Martin Luther King’s 40-38 Division 2 state championship victory over Lowell at Ford Field on Nov. 27.
“All I can say is these young men put us in a position to have that last play,” Crusaders’ coach Dale Harvel said. “All season, our motto has been ‘four quarters.’ I don’t know about the other game that ended like this. On the other hand, you don’t want to be in this position. You want to have the game more in control. Lowell played us all the way down to the final two seconds.”
The last time a title game was decided on the last play was in Class C contest in 1986, when Charlie Johnson threw a touchdown pass to Steve Mann for 17 yards on the last play for an 18-14 Detroit Country Day win over Muskegon Catholic Central.
This year’s dramatic play occurred after the ball was snapped with just two seconds to play. MLK had moved down the field from its own 3-yard line with only 37 seconds to play and struck gold on the final play.
“Credit them, they made the plays at the end,” Lowell coach Noel Dean said. “But our guys put themselves in a position to win it. We got to the last play.”
“On the final pass, up front, we were blocking pretty well,” Harvel said.
“There was still time in the ballgame,” Posey said. “We just had to make plays.”
Crusaders players and coaches credited the pass completion prior to the touchdown pass as perhaps the play of the game. Posey passed 25 yards to Donte Boyd, who took a hard hit but hung onto the ball with 10 seconds to play at the Lowell 40-yard line.
Posey was a replacement quarterback, as the starting player was out of the game for disciplinary reasons. He had played wide receiver prior to the change.
Martin Luther King finished the season with a 14-0 record.