Sophomore WR Nolan Carruthers bright spot in another Pinckney football loss
PINCKNEY — Pinckney’s football playoff hopes ended with a 28-13 loss to Adrian Friday night, but sophomore receiver Nolan Carruthers continued to provide optimism for the future.
Carruthers caught five passes for 106 yards and two touchdowns, scoring on passes of 39 and 28 yards from Brady Raymond.
It was the second 100-yard performance this season for Carruthers, who leads Livingston County with 39 catches and 483 receiving yards. He has four touchdown catches.
With the Pirates falling to 1-5, Carruthers has three games remaining to break the school record of 47 catches shared by Nick Wasyl (2013) and Justin Eagy (2014).
“He is special,” Pinckney coach Jason Carpenter said. “He’s a great kid. He works his butt off. Tonight, we saw a little bit of leadership out of him, which is nice to see as a sophomore. Those kids respect him for how hard he works and works on his craft. He’s an all-in kid for us.”
Carruthers’ first touchdown catch allowed Pinckney to draw even at 7-7 with 5:23 left in the second quarter.
Adrian responded by scoring the next three touchdowns, the first being a 10-yard run by Sean Parker that gave the Maples a 15-7 halftime lead.
After a scoreless third quarter, Adrian scored two touchdowns 2 minutes and 59 seconds apart to take a 28-7 lead with 6:38 remaining in the game. Carruthers’ second touchdown catch ended the scoring with 5:43 left.
The Pirates had only four first downs, while Adrian had 22. The Maples had a 35:23 to 12:37 advantage in time of possession.
“I’ve got to do a better job of coaching tackling, because there were way too many missed tackles,” Carpenter said. “We let them off the hook on third-and-19 and they got a first down. We gave up two fourth downs when they were in the red zone, because we missed four or five tackles and the guy got the first down.”
Adam Wisner was in on 13 tackles and Jadin Miller 10 for Pinckney.
Pinckney was 4-0 against Adrian since rejoining the SEC White in 2017, shutting out the Maples in the last two meetings.
The Pirates will visit Ypsilanti next Friday.
"We can only control three things: Our attitude, our effort and our choices," Carpenter said. "That's what I told them. We've got a choice of how we're going to approach these last three, starting tomorrow."
Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillKhan.
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Sophomore Nolan Carruthers bright spot in another Pinckney football loss
