By GRAHAM BROOKS / Staff Writer

BIRMINGHAM–The Helena Huskies had no problem taking care of the twice-beaten Pleasant Grove Spartans as big plays in the passing game helped propel Helena to a 30-7 road victory with the playoffs looming.

“Our guys took this as a very serious ballgame,” said Helena head coach Watt Parker. “I had someone ask me ‘are yall just going to try and ease through this game and look to the playoffs’ and I said no because that’d be disrespectful to the Helena community and they expect to see us give our very best every chance we get.”

Helena jumped on the Spartans early as Helena quarterback Riley Davis threw a perfect strike to Huskies wide receiver Justin Stuckey for a 47 yard touchdown pass to give Helena a 7-0 lead late in the first quarter.

The majority of Helena’s points came in the second quarter as the Huskies scored 23 points in the quarter to blow the game open.

Stuckey once again made a big play to open the second quarter as he returned the Spartans punt for a touchdown to extend Helena’s lead to 13-0.

Helena would recover the ensuing kickoff and the Huskies would take advantage.

Davis would toss his second touchdown pass of the night on a 34 yard touchdown to Kourtney Moore to give Helena a 20-0 lead. Davis finished with three touchdowns in the game.

Parker was pleased with the Huskies play offensively, especially at the quarterback position.

“It was one of those things where we felt like running consistently was not going to happen,” said Parker. “We felt like we could expose some things in the secondary and Riley played one of the best games he’s played all season and made some great passes. Even when he made a few bad passes, he did the smartest thing you can do and just throw it into a situation where we could make a play.”

Pleasant Grove’s lone highlight came on their first possession of the second half as they chewed up close to six minutes of clock in a scoring drive to cut Helena’s lead to 30-7.

That’s as close as the Spartans would get as Helena ran the ball the majority of the second half to run the clock and preserve the 30-7 victory.

Helena finished the regular season with a 8-2 record and 6-1 record in the region.

Helena will host a first round playoff game against Sidney Lanier on Friday, Nov. 6.