End of the line

FLORENCE - Terry Bowden's first season at North Alabama and the run toward a national football championship came to an end at Braly Stadium on Saturday afternoon, courtesy of a team the Lions had owned in nine previous meetings.

Carson-Newman won for the first time in nine tries in Florence, stopping the Lions 24-21 in the Division II football quarterfinals in front of 8,211 people.

The visiting Eagles (11-2) will play Grand Valley State, which knocked off defending champion Minnesota-Duluth 24-10, in next week's semifinals. Northwest-Missouri State plays California, Pa., in the other semifinal game, with the two winners advancing to the Dec. 12 championship game.

For Bowden and the Lions (11-2), it was a disappointing end to a season of promise after the first-year coach restocked the team with Division I transfers on offense.

Carson-Newman lost 31-14 to the Lions in the second week of the season in a game also played at Braly Stadium.

"Carson-Newman brought great intensity to the game," Bowden said. "They played better on both sides of the ball and deserved to win. They made some nice adjustments from the last time and they did a better job making them than we did reacting to them. Offensively, we were not on today."

Harlon Hill Trophy finalist Harrison Beck, a transfer to UNA from North Carolina State, had his worst game in his brief Lions career. He threw for 281 yards and one touchdown, but also had three interceptions that led to 14 points for Carson-Newman. Nearly half of his passing yards, including a 37-yard touchdown pass to Charles McClain, came late in the fourth quarter as the Lions tried to rally from a 10-point deficit.

Buck Wakefield, who missed the September game, had touchdown runs of 25 and 80 yards and finished with 160 yards on 20 carries to spark Carson-Newman.

The Lions fell behind 10-0 in the first quarter, but rallied to take a 14-10 lead in the opening two minutes of the third quarter on a 2-yard run by Marcus Sims and Tim Hicks' 8-yard run.

Carson-Newman regained the lead late in the third quarter on Nate Inman's 1-yard run, then broke it open when Wakefield dashed 80 yards through UNA's defense for a 24-14 lead with less than 10 minutes to play.

"Our football team just refused to lose today," Carson-Newman coach Ken Sparks said.

Bowden was disappointed with the outcome, but said the Lions came a long way in a short time this season.

"When I took the job in January, I had absolutely no idea where we would go with 21 seniors gone, every scorer and playmaker on offense gone," he said.

"We went out and scratched and put some kids together. I'm so glad of the way these players came together and became a team of brothers and got all the way to this football game. I'm so proud of our guys coming together and playing together and getting to where we got from where we started."

Gregg Dewalt can be reached at 740-5748 or gregg.dewalt@TimesDaily.com.