DURHAM-Southern Durham coach Adrian Jones plays to win the game. That much cannot be denied after a gutsy two-point conversion call late in the fourth quarter gave the Spartans the 8-7 win to avoid an Athens Drive upset in the first round of the 4-A playoffs.

The 14-seed Athens Drive (4-8) still held a slim 7-6 lead after Southern Durham's Alonzo Hedgepath scored from a yard out with 4:09 left in the game, and Jones wanted his third-seeded Spartans to go for the win.

“I didn’t want to go into overtime with those guys. They came out and really played hard," Jones said. "We didn’t expect [Athens] to come out and give us a contest like they did. Like I told the kids, you can’t take no team lightly in the playoffs. And we kind of took them lightly."

Hedgepath got the call on the first two-point conversion, running across the goal line, however, an illegal procedure call negated the play and moved the ball back to the 8-yard line.

The Spartans have had shaky field goal kicking all year, so even with the ball moved back, Jones still thought going for two was the better option.

This time, quarterback Alan Lea scrambled to his left, staring down the well-covered Tony Creecy in the back left corner of the end zone before throwing a prayer towards the boundary.

The talented junior snagged the ball out of the air and somehow touched his feet down as he was falling out of bounds. And for a second time, the Spartan home crowd celebrated a 8-7 lead.

“We’ve got a [play] called 'Crabtree,'" Creecy said, referring to Michael Crabtree of Texas Tech. “He has a little out move and then runs a slant, and that’s what I tried to do. But they played the slant and it was a broken play so I just made something else happen.”

Until Creecy's conversion, it was the 3-seed Southern Durham, not 14-seed Athens Drive, that found itself trying to come from behind for most of the game.

For Athens coach Jeff Smouse, it was nearly deja vu.

"I coached a 14-seed, Lumberton, when they came up and beat Garner back in 2000," Smouse said. "So I knew how that felt, and was hoping to carry that over."

Tears began to slide down Smouse's face in his final post-game address of the season. All that answered him were sniffles of Jaguar players and coaches.

"I think we [proved something]. [Southern Durham] were very gracious after the game and their kids were hugging our kids and saying 'Boy you guys really gave it to us,'" Smouse said. "It just kind of happened that way."

After losing key seniors from an 11-2 campaign last year, the Jaguars were an inexperienced team to open up the season. That inexperience didn't get any better after losing seemingly a different starter to injury each week.

"The adversity we had with the injuries, we've had game days where we think a kid can play but then he can't go. We've had a TV game against Broughton and we had seven starters in street clothes and the guy on TV was joking about it and we go down on the first drive and score and lose our starting quarterback and tackle on that series. And the tackle has never came back," Smouse said. "It's all part of the game, but we've never had anything like that."

Even without five defensive starters for most of the season and quarterback Ross Snotherly missing five games, the Jaguars won four conference games and landed the 14-seed in the 4-A playoffs. Those starters were back for the playoffs as was Snotherly.

The Jaguars used the water-logged field and their returning starters to their advantage and held a slim 7-0 lead for most of the game after Snotherly's 5-yard quarterback draw with 2:49 left in the first quarter.

The precipitation and the Jags' defense continued to stifle Southern Durham's playmakers until the rain subsided in the fourth quarter. With a muddied field that was hardly fit for swine, much less a playoff game, field position was pivotal.

"Both teams I thought played well in these conditions. Both of the teams couldn't get their offenses going. I'm real proud of our kids, they really hung in there."

Athens had been winning the field position game, pinning Southern Durham deep several times with Snotherly handling the punting duties. But all that changed in the fourth when the Spartans blocked Snotherly's last punt to set up the short 45-yard, game-winning drive.

The Spartans' Derrick Barnard entered the game with no interceptions, but picked off Snotherly three times on the night, once in the end zone, and dropped a fourth in the end zone.

The Jaguars ended their season 4-8 overall but did finish 4-3 after a 0-5 start.

"They're a good team," Smouse said of Southern Durham. "Holding them to eight points is something else, I just wish we had nine."