Bulldogs dominate Midway, reach SAC’s summit

ST. PAULS — On a night when the offense and defense played exceptionally well for the St. Pauls football team, the most important play of the night just might have been a touchdown by the Bulldogs’ special teams.

Midway’s Ke’Mari McNeil had just run back a kickoff 90 yards for a Raiders touchdown and an early lead. But St. Pauls provided the best possible response — a 75-yard return of their own, as Jahki Purcell scored to retake the lead, one that the Bulldogs would never again relinquish.

“I told them all year, you’re really not a team until you come back,” St. Pauls coach Mike Setzer said. “We really haven’t had a lot of that this year. … That momentum swing, a not-mature team drops their head; what we need to be able to do is, we’ve got to always be able to be a mature enough team to not drop our heads and come back and execute, and I thought we answered the bell really good on special teams.”

With that, the Bulldogs were off to the races and on their way to a dominant 59-22 win over Midway, claiming the winner-take-all game to take the 2024 Southeastern Athletic Conference championship.

“That sounds amazing,” Bulldogs senior quarterback Theophilus Setzer said. “My first conference championship in all four years of high school, so now I’m going out as a senior, starting playoffs real strong and everything. All this is behind us now; it feels good, but it’s time to get ready for playoffs.”

The conference title was the team’s first since winning back-to-back crowns in both the spring and fall seasons in 2021.

“Because of our standard in this program, we expect championships, and now they’ve got a championship behind them, and I think they deserve it, and I like the way that they took the championship,” Mike Setzer said. “I think (the seniors) did a great job of taking on responsibility and leadership, and I’m so proud of them, because now we just continue to hand the torch off.”

St. Pauls (8-2, 5-0 Southeastern) gained 491 yards of offense as the Bulldogs scored over 50 points against Midway for the fourth straight year. This included 357 yards on the ground for the Bulldogs.

Theophilus Setzer accounted for five touchdowns on his senior night; three came on the ground, where he rushed for 111 yards on just five attempts, while two more came on scoring passes as part of a 7-for-13 night for 134 yards.

“It was special, because all my family came out to watch me play today,” Theophilus Setzer said. “I just had to put a show on for them, and I feel like I did that. That was fun, and it’s definitely something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

Yoshua McBryde ran for 179 yards on 11 attempts with a pair of touchdown runs of over 60 yards.

“The offensive line, they’re great blocking,” McBryde said. “We executed very good tonight. We executed; we’ve been talking about execution for the last couple of weeks, and that’s what they did tonight.”

The Bulldogs defense, meanwhile, held Midway (8-2, 4-1 Southeastern), which had offensively been firing on all cylinders in recent weeks, to 65 first-half yards and 176 for the game.

“If you take a wing-T team, 65 yards in the half, that’s winning,” Mike Setzer said.

“Same stuff we put up Friday night, both ends of the ball,” Bulldogs defensive lineman De’Zhian Roberts said. “It’s the same thing we do every Friday night, keep grinding, keep going.”

Omar Canuto hit a 37-yard field goal for St. Pauls, opening the scoring at 3-0 with 4:46 left in the first quarter, with Ke’Mari McNeil’s kick return score coming on the next play for Midway and a successful two-point play making it 8-3 Raiders.

Purcell’s pivotal return followed, adding a kick return touchdown to his resume after two punt return scores and seven touchdown receptions previously this season.

“Our special teams are big for the team, so we had to come out and show them what our special teams can do too,” Purcell said. “I just got the ball and my special teams blocked for me like they always do. They make it happen for me and I just run the ball.”

Theophilus Setzer’s first touchdown run came a drive later for the Bulldogs, with the PAT making it a 16-8 game with 25 seconds left in the first quarter.

Roberts sacked Midway’s Tanner Williams in the end zone for a safety on the second play of the second quarter, extending the Bulldogs’ lead to 18-8.

St. Pauls then scored on the first play of the drive on its next two possessions: a 61-yard run by McBryde, then a 46-yard pass from Theophilus Setzer to Jaden Bethea, to make it 31-8 with 7:16 left in the half.

“We were executing, doing what we were supposed to do, and that’s what it’s got to feel like,” Mike Setzer said. “We’ve got to stop taking gasps after we make big plays — that’s who we are. … (Theophilus Setzer) is a big playmaker, Yosh (McBryde) is a big playmaker, (Quintell McNeill) is a big playmaker, we’ve got so many big playmakers, Bethea, so that’s what we want our offense to feel like, and our defense.”

Bethea caught three passes for 72 yards for a breakout performance on his senior night.

“I wanted it bad tonight. I wanted it all week, been working hard all week,” Bethea said. “I’m just glad I just finally made it, did it.”

“I’ve been trying to tell Bethea I’m going to get him in the game more, and he got there, he showed what he can do, what he knows he can do and I know he can do it,” Theophilus Setzer said. “He’s going to be a big part of the playoffs, and as long as all my other receivers, everybody’s going to keep eating.”

St. Pauls scored one more touchdown before the half, on an 18-yard Setzer run at the 4:38 mark, which made it 38-16 at intermission.

The Bulldogs had another span of quick-strike scores and explosive plays through the middle of the third quarter, scoring three touchdowns in a span of four offensive plays — a score was called back due to penalty on the other.

McBryde scored on a 68-yard run to start the stretch with 4:36 left in the third. A hook-and-lateral pass from Midway’s Wesley Tew to Wyatt Herring to Ke’Mari McNeil for an 86-yard touchdown — one which gave St. Pauls flashbacks to another de facto conference championship in 2022 at Clinton, which the Dark Horses won on such a play — pulled Midway to a 45-22 gap, but Setzer scored immediately on a 55-yard run to make it 52-22.

“(Running is) one thing about me everybody struggles with it seems,” Theophilus Setzer said. “I can throw the ball, I can run the ball, and they haven’t really solved me out yet. I’m going to keep giving everybody problems and I’m really looking forward to playoffs.”

Setzer then connected with Tykeem Oxendine, another senior, for a 32-yard touchdown that capped the scoring with 57 seconds left in the third.

Midway used much of the fourth quarter up with a single drive before the Bulldogs ran out the clock for the victory.

St. Pauls now awaits its playoff seeding and opponent; the NCHSAA will release playoff brackets on Sunday, Nov. 10 before the first round on Friday, Nov. 15, delayed by one week from the original date to allow teams in western North Carolina areas affected by Hurricane Helene more time to make up regular-season games.

“We’ve just got to practice hard, get better every day at practice and focus in,” Purcell said. “If we focus in, the better we focus in, the better we’ll be in the playoffs.”

Whoever their opponent ends up being, the Bulldogs know they’ll be home for at least the first round, perhaps more should they advance, by virtue of their conference championship. And they feel they’re playing well as they enter the most important games of the season.

“I think what’s scary is we’re getting healthier, so we’re going to have to be smart on how we do,” Mike Setzer said. “We’ve been in games like this. We don’t want to tense up, we’ll continue to do the things that we train to do, but on the flip side of that, take it up another level.”