WEIR — You can’t say they don’t have heart. But Friday, heart wasn’t enough.

A Cathedral Green Wave team that fought back from an awful start to the season to win their last three regular-season games earned their first postseason berth in three years as the No. 3 seed in Region 4-1A.

The Green Wave went on the road — 200 miles away — for their Class 1A South State first-round game at Weir, a team that hadn’t lost since Oct. 8.

Led by Cramer Miller’s 177 yards rushing and three touchdowns, Weir wore down Cathedral’s defense and went on to defeat the Green Wave 27-7 and advance to the second round.

“We did the best we could,” Cathedral coach Craig Beesley said. “We turned it around the second half of the season. The kids should not hang their heads down.”

Miller scored on a 20-yard run and Jay Miller’s extra point gave Weir a 7-0 lead with 5:22 to go in the first quarter.

But it was the second quarter that proved to be the turning point of the ball game as Cathedral miscues turned into points for Weir.

Cramer Miller threw an 11-yard touchdown pas to Sammie Carter and ran in for the 2-point conversion to give the Lions a 15-0 lead. Then Miller scored on touchdown runs of 3 and 15 yards for a 27-0 halftime lead.

“I thought we played well. We made a few mistakes early in the second quarter and they took advantage of it,” Beesley said. “We played extremely well in the second half shutting them out and scoring a touchdown ourselves.”

Daniel Huffines scored on a 7-yard run with 9:06 remaining in the fourth quarter. Cole Mann added the extra point.

Weir (10-3), the No. 2 seed out of Region 3-1A, forced Cathedral to throw the ball more than it wanted to because the Lions’ defense shut down the Green Wave’s running game. Cathedral (4-7) was held to 43 yards on 13 carries. Dylan White completed 17 of 33 passes for 108 yards and two interceptions. Daniel Huffines had five receptions for 41 yards.

“They were controlling our running game. We weren’t getting anything out of the running game, so we had to throw the ball. It was out of necessity,” Beesley said.

Meanwhile, the Lions’ ground game was very effective. In addition to Miller’s outstanding performance, Deandre Ramos had 55 yards on just five carries and Jimarrian Woodard had 50 yards on seven carries.

“We knew they had two good running backs behind a physical offensive line,” Beesley said. “We just couldn’t stop them.”