Asheville Citizen-Times sports writers Romando Dixson and Keith Jarrett report on Asheville's 31-10 victory over Tuscola in the second round of the 3A playoffs.

Cougars win rematch with Tuscola - Asheville advances to 3rd round (Romando Dixson)

WAYNESVILLE – Once again, Asheville High and Tuscola met in less-than-desirable conditions at Weatherby Stadium. This time, it's the Mountaineers wondering what if.

 The sixth-seeded Cougars avenged their lone conference loss with a resounding 31-10 victory Friday in the second round of the NCHSAA 3-A playoffs. On a bitterly cold night, the Cougars played turnover-free football and racked up 431 yards of offense in a matchup of Mountain Athletic Conference co-champions.

Asheville junior Darius Drummond caught three passes for 101 yards and a touchdown. He also made two interceptions, helping the Cougars (9-3) eliminate third-seeded Tuscola (11-2).

Just four weeks ago on the same field, the host Mountaineers beat Asheville 34-13 on a rainy night.

“It feels so good,” Drummond said. “No disrespect to them. But we wanted revenge. The first time we dropped passes, and we missed some plays. We promised ourselves we wouldn't let that happen again, and we came out and won when it mattered most.”

The Cougars will play at second-seeded South Point (12-1) in the third round next week.

Tailback Greg Ray rushed for 139 yards on 17 carries, and quarterback Brandon Whiteside completed 6-of-9 passes for 135 yards and two touchdowns.

Asheville lived off the big pass play. Tyequan Finley caught a 70-yard touchdown from Whiteside. Finley's third touchdown in two playoff games gave Asheville a 10-3 lead going into halftime.

In the third quarter, the Cougars beat the Mountaineers on a trick play. Wide receiver Darion Ray, lined up in the backfield and threw a 70-yard touchdown pass to Drummond to give the Cougars a 17-3 lead.

The Cougars made it 24-10 when Whiteside threw his second touchdown of the night. He connected with fullback Travis Whiteside for a 6-yard score with 48 seconds left in the third quarter.

Tuscola had 291 yards of offense and didn't punt once but committed three turnovers and stalled out in Asheville territory at other times.

“That,” Tuscola coach Donnie Kiefer said, “was the frustrating thing about the night.”

The Mountaineers also dropped two passes in the end zone and ended up with no points each time.

Once more, Cougars heat up as the weather turns frigid (Keith Jarrett)

WAYNESVILLE – Trying to beat the Asheville High football team in November was like trying to find a warm spot at Weatherby Stadium on Friday night.

 You could try as hard as you can, but it just wasn't going to happen.

This is the time of year when the Cougars shine.

Over the past seven seasons, Asheville has won 20 playoff games, and four of their five losses didn't come until the semifinal round.

When the weather gets cold, the Cougars heat up, as they did against Tuscola with a resounding 31-10 victory over their fellow co-champions of the Mountain Athletic Conference.

And it was a bitter, three-dog night in the outskirts of Waynesville on Friday night, and camouflage jumpsuits were as prominent as big plays by the Asheville offense and clutch stops by the defense.

The Cougars (9-3) made this trip west four weeks ago and left 34-13 losers to an upstart Mountaineers program revitalized by second-year coach Donnie Kiefer.

But this was a different game, a different time of the season, and Asheville looked like the playoff veterans while Tuscola appeared to be jumpy and uncomfortable in the postseason spotlight.

Tuscola played football for decades without a losing season back in the day, when coach Doug Brooks won with solid defense and a relentless running game.

But the once-proud program had hit hard times before Kiefer and the gifted right arm of Tyler Brosius combined to begin doing some strange things seldom seen before in this section of Haywood County — the forward pass.

But that passing talent that carried Tuscola to an 11-1 record betrayed the Mountaineers when they needed it the most.

Three interceptions and a pair of dropped touchdown passes doomed Tuscola, as Asheville's defense stopped five offensive possessions inside the Tuscola 35-yard line with the three picks and two fourth-down stops.

Asheville's big-play offense did the rest — a pair of 70-yard touchdown passes and Greg Ray's 50-yard run among the direct hits to the Tuscola defense.

This isn't one of those Asheville teams with Division I talent in the backfield — it's a blue-collar bunch in which six players go both ways.

But the team is doing what it always seems to do this time of year — stay alive for another week and send other teams packing.

The Cougars have advanced to the third round of postseason play for the seventh time in eight years, and they are 6-0 in third-round games in that span.

“It's a magical thing,” said coach Danny Wilkins, who won a state title in 2005 and has lost three excruciating last-second state semifinal games since 2003 by a total of five points.

“We talk a lot about the round of 16, the round of 8, the round of 4. We've had a lot of our staff here a long time and always had some players left over who know what it takes this time of year.

“We talk a lot about the history and the tradition we have, and the pride that goes with that to keep it going each year.”

So once again Asheville will be playing on Thanksgiving weekend, a tradition that has become as commonplace for the Cougars as winning in November.