In between fumbles, Compton’s Green was really, really good

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Compton running back Donald Green had a little trouble hanging onto the ball during the Tarbabes’ 34-28 victory over Millikan in a Moore League game Friday night at Millikan.

First, he fumbled it away after a short return of the opening kickoff, giving the Rams possession at the Compton 23-yard line. Then,he fumbled on his last touch, at the Tarbabes’ 30-yard line with 2:17 to play.

‘I didn’t know what was happening,’ Green said. ‘It just came loose.’

He shouldn’t feel too bad, though, and not just because, in the end, Compton won.

In between the miscues, Green, who entered the game with 1,438 yards and 15 touchdowns in 107 carries, was a workhorse, the main man in the Tarbabes’ offense. He set up most his team’s touchdowns -- even though junior running back Curry Williams scored three of them and quarterback Bernard Griffin had another -- by taking the majority of handoffs on each drive.

Green showed off his 4.4 speed in the 40-yard dash when he made an electrifying Reggie Bush-like, side-to-side run of 64 yards for a touchdown that gave the Tarbabes their biggest lead at 34-7 with 8:39 to play in the third quarter.

Compton (8-0, 4-0) needed every bit of that lead before finally coming away with a victory when Jeremy Brooks was stopped short of the goal-line and lost the ball in the last 35 seconds. Read the Long Beach Press-Telegram version of events here.

‘We have a lot of work to do,’ Compton Coach Calvin Bryant said. ‘We can’t keep turning the ball over like we did tonight.’

That’s because Compton faces Long Beach Poly (7-1, 4-0) for sole possession of first place in the Moore League, next week.

-- Lauren Peterson

-- Image from www.toypost.co.uk