Dunbar keeping hopes alive

Updated: March 22, 2011 5:22PM

Dunbar kept its hopes of earning a state playoff berth alive. And they did it with an exclamation point.

The Mighty Men (4-4, 3-2 Illini Red Bird) started strong and had a running clock in the third quarter of a 54-12 rout of Curie Friday afternoon at Gately Stadium.

"I really didn't think the game would go like that," Dunbar coach Glenn Johnson said. "Nobody wants to play Dunbar in October. The tiebreaker [if there is a three-way tie for second place between these teams and Lane] is points allowed, so we should finish second."

Dunbar, which was 2-4 after six games, scored the first five times it had the ball. Quarterback Darvell Harris started things with a one-yard run that capped a 67-yard drive. Then Harris completed a 15-yard scoring pass to Antwan Jones. A two-point conversion made it 16-0.

A one-yard run by Harris, a 34-yard scoring pass from Harris to his brother Travon and a four-yard run by Darvell Harris, a year older than his brother made it 36-0.

"We didn't want to be the first Dunbar team to miss the [Public League] playoffs," Darvell Harris said. "We knew that we could compete."

Curie (4-3, 3-2) got on the board late in the first half on a four-yard run by Jamell Tambah.

But in the third quarter, the Mighty Men scored on a 36-yard run by Jones, a 27-yard pass from Darvell Harris to Omar Collins, that started a running clock, and a 10-yard run by Jones to make it 54-6. Brandon Barker scored on a six-yard run late for the Condors.

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