Last week, Brentwood Academy cheerleader Griffin Cole and the rest of the Eagles faithful blew into Chattanooga, flexed their muscles and strolled back to Nashville with an easy win.
Friday night, the state's top-ranked team was pushed to its limits by a crafty, creative and cavalier bunch of Baylor Red Raiders.
"To tell you the truth, they were more ready to play than we were," Brentwood Academy coach Cody White said after his team's 38-31 win that was very much in doubt until Trent Taylor's interception in the final 90 secondst. "I think you have to give Baylor a lot of credit, and Phil (Massey) and his staff do a great job and his kids always play hard."
If playing hard was expected, playing with house money was a full-fledged benefit for Massey's bunch. Baylor fired all its barrels in a highlight-filled first half that was part video game, part "SportsCenter" and part dream.
Facing the Eagles, who are ranked No. 28 in the country nationally by MaxPreps.com and improved to 8-1, a week after they rolled to 650 yards against McCallie, Baylor held nothing back.
"We knew we were the underdog and we had to give them everything we had," Baylor senior Sean Wampler said after recording three tackles and gaining 105 yards in total offense, including running the final 35 yards on an impromptu hook-and-lateral 55-yard touchdown on the final play of the first half. "We may have lost but we played with a lot of heart, and that's all you can ask."
Heart? You bet. Heck, heart and the kitchen sink..
The Red Raiders (5-3, 2-2) matched the BA offensive avalanche with a creative style that was part Michelangelo and part Michael Vick.
Senior quarterback Nick Tiano hit on his first eight passes and the offense made the most of every chance -- including converting on three fourth-down tries -- to keep pace with BA's tandem of quarterback Jeremiah Oatsvall and fullback Jacob Cretin, who combined to rush for 238 yards and four scores.
Tiano finished 15-of-23 for 274 and a score, but Oatsvall continued to dazzle in the Scenic City.
"Coaches kept encouraging us to go down and score and keep scoring," said Oatsvall, the star-bound sophomore who looks a lot like Johnny Football and who was born at Chattanooga's Erlanger Hospital and has excelled in the last two weeks here. "I have the best receivers in the state and we trust our offensive line, so whatever they would do, we knew we had to keep doing our thing."
BA and Oatsvall would march the length of the field and score, and Baylor answered with a variety of methods that ranged from trickery to perfection, like Tiano's strike down the sideline to Gage Upshaw for a 50-yard play that set up Ryan Parker's 2-yard score.
It was part of a magical first half in which Baylor took a 31-28 lead into the locker room.
BA, however, adjusted and shut out the Red Raiders in the second half.
"We wanted to do everything we could," Baylor all-purpose star Adrian Harris said. "I've been hurt and wanted to come back and help the team and tried to do that tonight."
Harris certainly did, returning a kickoff 96 yards for a score and gaining 219 of Baylor's 583 total yards. Harris was just one of the special-teams stars for Baylor, which converted a fake punt and had 179 total yards in kick returns compared to zero for BA because Colin Brewer put each of his kickoffs into the end zone.
Still, it was not enough against a BA team that was balanced and relentless.
"We've played a really tough schedule," White said, "and I think that really helped us."
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com