ST. PAULS — Last week, ahead of the Bulldogs’ game against undefeated Clinton, St. Pauls football coach Mike Setzer said his team would have to play mistake-free football to have a chance to upset the Dark Horses.

But when the teams met Monday at G.S. Kinlaw Stadium, some early mistakes by the Bulldogs gave Clinton the lead — and once the seemingly unstoppable force known as the Dark Horses had some momentum, they kept on rolling the rest of the night in a 50-16 victory.

“I thought we came out pretty good, I thought we answered the bell pretty good — but we had a couple mistakes back to back,” Setzer said. “You can’t do that with that team; that’s a championship-caliber team. They’ve taken a step above us this year, so we’ve got to bet back to the drawing board. But it’s got to be total athletic amnesia right now, on to the next one, Midway.”

St. Pauls (5-4, 3-1 Southeastern Athletic Conference) lost fumbles to the Dark Horses on its first two possessions of the game. While the Bulldogs forced a turnover on downs after the first one, the second gave Clinton (9-0, 4-0 Southeastern) the ball at the Bulldogs’ 11-yard line, quickly leading to the game’s first touchdown, a 2-yard run by Amaris Williams with 5:07 left in the first quarter. Josiah McLaurin ran in the two-point try for an 8-0 Dark Horses lead.

“You just can’t make mistakes like that, and we’ve got to do better of capitalizing on not making turnovers and capitalizing on the possession of the ball,” Setzer said. “We could’ve done a better job of helping out our defense.”

Clinton forced a St. Pauls punt, and McLaurin’s 65-yard return for a would-be touchdown was negated by penalty — but the Dark Horses scored a play later on a 40-yard dash by Williams. The two-point conversion gave Clinton a 16-0 lead with 1:12 to go in the period.

Still within two scores, St. Pauls drove as far as the Clinton 28-yard line on the ensuing possession, which took nearly eight minutes off the clock — but the drive stalled and ended in a turnover on downs. Clinton drove 68 yards after regaining possession, scoring on a 5-yard McLaurin run for a 22-0 lead with 1:52 remaining before halftime.

“I felt like we left 14 points on the board in that half,” Setzer said. “We definitely talked about that at halftime, we missed a couple shots down there, and a turnover. … That’s something we’ve got to do better with. But you can’t get it back. … If we’re trying to get back to prominence — I don’t think we’ve fallen too much, but there’s a lot of things we’ve got to clean up this year and I think I lot of this youth has continued to show up.”

Clinton’s offense hit yet another gear in the second half, with 284 of the Dark Horses’ 426 total yards coming after intermission, including 223 of the team’s 365 rushing yards on the night.

McLaurin ran in a 2-yard touchdown on the opening drive of the third quarter, with Nydarion Blackwell hitting Landen Pearson for the two-point conversion for a 30-0 lead. A drive later, the Blackwell-to-Pearson connection resulted in a 35-yard touchdown pass for the Dark Horses, and the pair found each other once more on the two-point try to give Clinton a 38-0 lead with 5:20 left in the third.

St. Pauls’ best drive came after that score, gaining 56 yards and four first downs en route to the end zone, scoring with a 2-yard Quintell McNeill run. The junior back also ran in the conversion to make it 38-8 with 1:17 left in the third.

Clinton responded in two plays with a 60-yard McLaurin run, taking a 44-8 lead at the end of the third, and scored on the first play of its next possession, a 61-yard sprint by Josiah Robinson.

St. Pauls concluded the night with a 13-yard touchdown run by Yoshua McBryde, who also scored the conversion to establish the final 34-point margin.

All three of Clinton’s primary ball carriers had big nights; Robinson ran for 145 yards and one touchdown on just five carries, with 125 yards on two attempts in the second half. McLaurin ran 14 times for 140 yards and three scores, with Williams netting 80 yards on seven carries with two touchdowns.

Blackwell didn’t have to throw the ball often, but gained 61 yards through the air on just three completions.

McBryde ran for 58 yards and a touchdown for St. Pauls and McNeill ran for 42 yards.

After the teams battled for the Southeastern Athletic Conference lead for the third straight year, Clinton’s win clinches no worse than a share of the conference title for the Dark Horses, who won last year’s meeting 23-20 to claim the league title. The Dark Horses can clinch the outright title with a win Friday at Fairmont.

“I don’t feel like they’ve left us as a program — we’re the two flagships in the conference — and we’ve traded championships back and forth, but now they’ve got two back-to-back so they’re up on us,” Setzer said. “We have to be honest with that, we have to own where we’re at and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

St. Pauls will face Midway Friday in Newton Grove; barring an upset loss by Clinton, the game will be for second place in the Southeastern standings. The conference runner-up comes with an automatic state-playoff berth — though both teams are comfortably projected in the field and will likely earn an at-large bid with a loss.

Despite a short week after the Clinton game was delayed to Monday, Setzer is confident in his team’s ability to prepare under the circumstances after doing so numerous times during COVID-19-affected seasons in the spring and fall of 2021, during which the Bulldogs were 21-2 including a spring 2021 2AA East Regional championship.

“(The short week) doesn’t scare us anymore,” Setzer said. “COVID taught us a lot of stuff, how to be resilient; there’s things that we did in the COVID year that I never dreamed of, so I think that right now … COVID has allowed us to be resilient and jump around and get it right back. We’ve kind of got the key to understand how we can come back. So we’re not fearful — we just know that we’ve got work to do in the morning, so tonight’s going to be a long night and early morning.”