Now, chances are, Jones can cross one more thing off the list of things he can do — play in the playoffs.
The Wolverines entered the final week of the regular season sitting in seventh in the Division IV, Region XVI computer rankings with the top eight teams advancing to Week 11.
The win means the Wolverines should still be practicing.
“I feel it,” Jones said as a smile widened across his face. “This is the first time ever for me in my four years and it feels great.”
On the other sideline, Belmont (6-3) needed a win and a little help to make the playoffs in a quick two-year turnaround under guru Earl White, but will most likely miss moving on.
“It’s OK because we are young,” White said. “We had a chance late, but it’s OK. That was a great job by our kids and a great job by them, but we still got a lot of work to do.”
Dunbar coach Darran Powell was thinking the same thing after the Bison chewed up 376 yards on the ground, eating chunks of time off the clock and keeping the game within reach deep into the fourth quarter.
“Their offense is hard to stop,” Powell said. “It is real tricky. We just have to be more disciplined when we play them again, but they (Dunbar’s players) will hear about it at practice this week.”
Belmont stalled on the Dunbar 4 trailing 38-28 when the Wolverines flipped the switch and removed doubt from the outcome.
Jones went 94 yards after taking a screen pass from Jamar Walker. The Wolverines recovered an onside kick and on the next play, Tavion Thomas went 58 yards to push the lead to 54-28.
“We had asked for a squib kick and it just happened to fall to us,” Powell said. “We are a team that strikes fast and we are blessed it went our way.”
Things settled down after a wild first quarter.
The teams scored on three of the four possessions in the first quarter with the Wolverines capitalizing on a huge kickoff return, a long pass and a fumble recovery to forge a 22-6 lead.
Dunbar had first-half scoring drives of four, three and one play while the Bison were grinding out long drives, rushing for 230 yards and 14 first downs in the opening half, led by Elijah Malcolm’s 123 on 17 carries.
Malcolm finished with 179 yards on 29 carries.
“We looked at our last two games as playoff games,” Powell said. “We knew they would be tough games, but we would be in good shape going into the playoffs.”
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