WINTHROP — The Class D South heavyweight bout lived up to its billing Friday night at Maxwell Field.

Winthrop/Monmouth and Oak Hill battled punch for punch until the final bell, when the Ramblers won a 29-22 decision.

“It was a battle, the whole thing,” Winthrop running back Nate Scott said. “A battle, inside-out.”

Matthew Strout’s 6-yard touchdown run and subsequent run on the two-point conversion gave Oak Hill a 22-15 lead early in the fourth quarter.

The Winthrop (5-0) sideline didn’t need a pep talk.

“They just punched us in the mouth, and we need an answer,” Ramblers coach Dave St. Hilaire said.

They did.

The legs of Alec Brown and Scott moved the Ramblers 53 yards in nine plays, capped by a 5-yard run by Brown to tie the game 22-22 midway through the period.

“We’ve been there before. This is a very seasoned group. We’ve faced adversity. We just knew we can’t lay down, we got to get back up,” Brown said.

“It’s a great team, obviously, and we knew they weren’t going give up, so we had to keep on going.”

Then, the Raiders flinched at the wrong time. On the second play of the ensuing drive, Strout fumbled the ball and Winthrop’s Andrew Pazdziorko recovered to give the Ramblers the ball at the Oak Hill 42-yard line.

Brown and Scott again accounted for the bulk of the offense, but luck helped out. Quarterback Matt Ingram threw a pass into a crowd of players; the ball bounced off a Raider and into Scott’s hands for a 13-yard gain.

Three plays later, Brown ran in from a yard out to make it 29-22 with less than five minutes to play.

A 1-yard run by Brown a few minutes later was the final blow.

Strout completed two passes to Steven Gilbert on consecutive plays to open the next drive. However, a short run by Strout was followed by three straight incomplete passes, and the Raiders turned it over on downs with less than three minutes remaining.

Two runs by Brown and another by run gained 9 yards and left the Ramblers with a fourth-and-1 at Oak Hill’s 43. The Raiders were out of timeouts.

St. Hilaire said the dilemma wasn’t whether to put and rely on the defense to hold.

“I wasn’t thinking about punting, it was what the play call was going to be,” St. Hilaire said. “You put the ball in your best ball carrier’s hands and behind a line that’s a seasoned line, and we got the first down.”

Ingram handed off to Brown, who ran up the middle and gained 5 yards. The Ramblers ran out the clock from there.

Brown finished with 123 yards and three TDs on 16 carries. Scott finished with 182 yards on 20 carries.

“It always comes down to blocks,” Scott said. “When the line’s blocking well, running backs get a lot of yards, that’s just how it works, and they did a heck of a job today.”

Brown echoed that sentiment.

“The boys up front did a heck of a job,” he said. “They were making holes all day long.”

Brown’s longest run of the game set up the first score. A punt by Gilbert was downed at the Winthrop 3, but on the next play Brown took a handoff 68 yards to the Oak Hill 29. He scored his first TD a few plays later.

The Raiders answered a few plays later on Gilbert’s 77-yard run. Oak Hill faked a kick on the PAT, and instead Colby Webster threw to Darryn Bailey to give the Raiders an 8-7 lead.

Winthrop quickly answered. Ingram connected with Bennett Brooks for a 49-yard TD pass. Another Ingram-to-Brooks hook up on the two-point conversion made it 15-8, Ramblers.

Gilbert scored on a 5-yard run, but his PAT kick was blocked by Antonio Meucci, preserving Winthrop’s lead 15-14 in the third quarter.

The Raiders then took a lead early in the fourth on Strout’s TD run.

Gilbert finished with 102 yards on 16 carries and caught three passes four 42 yards.

“They made less mistakes than we did,” Doucette said. “We had a turnover in the fourth quarter, but I think they’re just a little faster. They’ve a physical team, they’re a very good team, they’re very well-coached.”

With the victory, Winthrop finally got over the Oak Hill after suffering tough-to-swallow losses to the eventual state champion Raiders last year. That’s nice, but the Ramblers are thinking more about 2016.

“It’s definitely a good feeling, but we just got to look forward because this is this season, we’ve got some goals down the road, and that’s what we’re focused on now,” Scott said.