The fourth quarter of Vicksburg’s first round playoff game with Pontotoc was a wild affair with four touchdowns scored, but the Gators got enough defensive stops early and late to grab the school’s first home playoff win since 2001.

The Gators (9-2) will travel to New Hope (7-4)  on Friday at 7 p.m.

Vicksburg senior defensive lineman Anthony Addison said the Gators’ will benefit mentally from holding off a good Pontotoc offense with three turnovers on downs in Friday night’s 30-21 win at Memorial Stadium.

“This was a pretty good win and should get us ready for our next opponent. At this point, you just have to go out and play. They (Pontotoc) made some good plays, but we did too,” Addison said.

The Gator defense, which had allowed just a touchdown or less in eight previous regular season wins including shutouts in three of their last four games, was hit for 21 points by Pontotoc. All three of the scores were set up by big plays.

Still, Vicksburg made enough stops to get the victory. They forced a Pontotoc fumble late in the first quarter to set up a go-ahead 31-yard field goal by Patrick Parker early in the second period to give VHS a 10-7 lead. That lead held into the second half.

After a 48-yard touchdown run by Antonio Norfort extended the lead to 16-7 early in third quarter, the Gator defense forced a turnover on downs after Pontotoc quarterback Candan Dallas underthrew a fourth down pass.Dallas would come back to hit a pair of seam passes. One went for a 34-yard touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter and the other set up a 1-yard TD plunge that cut Vicksburg’s lead to 23-21 with six minutes left.

Malcolm Butler’s dramatic 54-yard touchdown, after he had reversed field to avoid a certain loss, provided enough final juice for the Gators defense to rise again in the final two minutes. They stopped the Warriors (5-6) for the third time on downs after Ryan Thompson was tackled a foot short of a first down at the PHS 30 with a minute left.

“When you’re in a spread offense, you’re always in the game,” VHS coach Alonzo Stevens said. “We just tried to shorten the game with our running and it worked because we scored all but one of our touchdowns off long runs. ”

The Vicksburg pass rush had four sacks and held Dallas, usually a potent scrambler, to just 15 net yards rushing.

Vicksburg, meanwhile, had 378 yards on the ground.

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Contact Jeff Byrd at jbyrd@vicksburgpost.com.