Not a lot went right for Milford Mill's football team before Friday night's game at No. 10 Dundalk.
First, the bus driver took the team to Dunbar. Then, once the Millers made it to Dundalk, they were 30 minutes late, delaying the game. When they finally got on the field on a warm and humid night, they made some key mistakes, including a fumble on the Owls 7-yard line for a turnover.
But in the end, Milford Mill scored 20 fourth-quarter points and came away with the upset. Troy Scott's 7-yard touchdown run with 1:17 left gave the Millers a 27-22 victory in a Baltimore County 4A-3A Division game.
The defense finished off the game with a big stand against Dundalk and elusive quarterback Darrius Sample, who ran for 241 yards and had already run for a touchdown and thrown for one.
Sample got the Owls (1-1) into scoring position with a 54-yard pass to Eddie Dickerson with about a minute left in the game. With a 15-yard penalty for face-masking against the Millers tacked on, Dundalk was within 7 yards of a touchdown.
The Millers, however, stymied the Owls by holding Sample to a 5-yard and a 2-yard run and covering his receivers to force a couple of incomplete passes and a turnover on downs.
"We had to stop him," Millers coach Reggie White said of Sample, an All-Metro second-team selection last year after leading the Owls to the state title game for the first time in school history.
The Millers (2-0) scored first when quarterback Kyrel Eley connected with Ugo Obasi for a 43-yard touchdown with seconds left in the opening quarter. But they didn't score again until the fourth quarter.
Trailing 14-7 and just having fumbled the ball through end zone for a Dundalk touchback, the Millers started moving the ball consistently in the fourth quarter.
They scored on a 17-yard pass from Eley to Jawan Rabb and, after forcing the Owls to go three-and-out, Eley threw a 52-yard strike to Dickerson that set up a 3-yard touchdown run by Scott. The conversion failed, so that gave the Millers a 19-14 lead with 9:15 to go.
The Owls turned the ball over on their next drive, but quickly got it back and Sample took them 65 yards in just over a minute. He gained all but 5 yards in the drive, polishing it off with a 41-yard touchdown run. He then hit Daquan Townes with the conversion pass to take the lead back, 22-19.
Milford Mill got another big play when Eley hit Rabb for 41 yards on the next drive and Scott eventually finished it with a 7-yard touchdown run. The conversion pass from Eley to Dickerson put the Millers up 27-22 with 1:17 to go before the defense took over.
The win could be critical in the playoffs because both teams are in Class 3A North. Dundalk won the regional title last year and the Millers, who lost to the Owls last season, did not qualify for the playoffs.