ALABASTER – After entering the halftime locker room tied at 6-6, the Thompson Warriors faced an ultimatum. With the Carver Wolverines matching them on defense, coach Mark Freeman knew his team needed to extend drives and get scores over their foes from Montgomery. The speech worked.  Thompson dropped 31 points in the second half and scored on its first five second-half drives to finish off the 37-6 win over Carver-Montgomery on Thursday, Aug. 21 at Warrior Stadium.  "We came out and made mistakes. First half, first game, you're going to make some," Freeman said. "We adjusted at halftime to some things that we really should have been doing in the first half. We came out and the kids played really good."     After a 30-minute lightning delay to start, the first quarter saw the teams exchange long drives that ended in turnovers before the punts came quick and fast.  Carver got the ball first and got back-to-back first down plays before getting inside the Thompson 40 on a third-down carry. A scramble shortly after got them into the red zone, but the quarterback slipped and dropped the ball just past the 20.   Then, Cam Pritchett picked up the ball and flipped the field for the Warriors.  Thompson nearly ended its first drive as quickly as it started, but a fourth-and-1 conversion run by RJ Evans set up big things to come.  Darion Moseley took the ball to midfield before Pryce Lewis turned a checkdown into a 25-yard gain with his speed and shiftiness.  However, Carver's defense tightened up once Thompson got into the red zone, tackling the carrier for a loss before a Warriors hold and sack. Seaborn's subsequent pass was deflected at the line and caught for a pick.  The next three drives ended in punts before Thompson got back to its old tricks. Two plays after a 15-yard Evans run to start the drive, Seaborn uncorked a deep ball for Dedrick Kimbrough, who caught the ball in stride inside the 25 and ran past the falling defender for the score.  The connection that led to so many scores to end last year put the Warriors in front, but the extra point banged off the outside left upright, making it 6-0 with 9:18 left in the first.  After both teams traded punts, Carver went to work on the ground with 4:49 left and milked four minutes from the clock. A pair of quarterback runs from Zion Crumpton ended the drive, first to get inside the red zone before a 16-yard TD scamper and missed extra point tied the game at 6-6.  That proved to be the halftime score despite Seaborn's attempts at a 35-second drive, including a 34-yard shot to Lewis at the Carver 24.  With the game hanging in the balance at the half, Thompson took the game by the horns. After Lewis got a 16-yard gain, Seaborn found Trey Knight in the corner of the end zone for a 16-yard touchdown catch. The Warriors got penalized during a scramble play following a botched hold, but they drilled the extra-distance extra point for the 13-6 lead.  However, the big turning point was on the next play when Moala recovered a fumble to put Thompson on the Wolverines 38.  A defensive pass interference got the Warriors to the 10-yard line before Urijah Casey ran nine yards up the middle to go up 20-6 with 9:17 remaining in the third quarter.  From there, it was all Thompson on both sides of the ball. Lewis and Moseley got chunk plays on the next offensive drive, setting up KJ Jackson for his first touchdown in a Warriors uniform, a 7-yard score for the 27-6 lead with 2:49 left in the third.  That lead held until the start of the fourth, but Eli King jumped the first pass of the final period for an interception. His turnover set up a 62-yard scoring drive capped by a Seaborn scramble as he extended to the pylon for a 13-yard touchdown and a 34-6 advantage with less than nine minutes left.  Damonte Tabb then made it four turnovers for the Warriors with an interception, and Ethan Black hit a 23-yard field goal with 6:16 remaining to extend the scoring streak to five drives and the lead to 37-6.  That proved to be the final score as Thompson saw out the 31-point victory to open the season.  After the game, Freeman chalked up most of the first half to first-game rustiness and a few injuries during practice that limited them. However, he credited much of the shift to recognizing Carver was getting yards on the quarterback run and making plays on offense.  "Getting the personnel we needed to be on the field and offense and tackling them," Freeman said of the biggest shift in the second half. "Don't let the quarterback escape runs, power read runs. (Crumpton's) a good football player, he's an SEC football player, you got to get him down. But I think formationally, we got in some stuff we should have been in earlier, and we got guys on offensive line. We got four new starters and sometimes it just takes a little while to move guys around and see what you got."  Thompson will now take its 1-0 record into a national top-25 matchup with Georgia's Grayson Rams, the defending Georgia Class AAAAAA state champions, MaxPreps' No. 4 team in the country and the team that beat the Warriors 15-14 in last year's opener, on Aug. 29 at 5 p.m. central time at Grayson High School.  After a stronger second half that saw the Warriors play cleaner and get to the end zone, Freeman hopes it emboldens them to bring their best into a tough test.  "Confidence in what we do," Freeman said. "We're going to play a nationally ranked team, I think fourth in the nation, they blew somebody (Collins Hill) out last week. They're a good team, that's going to be a good game for us. But I think we got better our second half, fundamentally. I think we played better."

Read more at: https://www.shelbycountyreporter.com/2025/08/21/thompson-uses-31-point-second-half-four-turnovers-to-put-away-carver-montgomery/