That looked much better as La Porte gashed Baytown Sterling early and often for a big district victory.
La Porte moves to 6-1 on the season and 2-0 in district. They will meet North Shore in La Porte this week. North Shore has a identical record and the winner will be in the drivers seat for the district title.
Baytown Sterling moved to 2-5 and 0-2 in district. Barring a miracle upset by Sterling over Port Arthur Memorial or North Shore, they are eliminated from post season contention.
This pretty much assures a La Porte playoff spot. They will have their toughest three games of the season the next three weeks.
On to the analysis of the 56-21 blowout.
La Porte came out having no problem moving the ball on the ground. After the defense forced a 3 and out on the Rangers first possession; La Porte took the ball and moved it down the field steadily eating clock. The drive was capped by a Senior RB Anthony Webb 8 yard touchdown run.
Sterling came out the next drive and hit their only real offensive output of the game with a 54 yard touchdown pass from Senior QB Chance Nelson to Sophomore WR Jamar Gibson. Nelson looked very quick on the night, but La Porte's defense was all over the running game and the only real chance for the Rangers was through the air.
La Porte took the ball and again drove down the field this time for Sophomore RB Keith Whitely to run it in from 6 yards out.
This is when a interesting part of the game began. Baytown Sterling had obvious holes throughout their kickoff return formation. This was the absolute worst formation I've ever seen. The Bulldogs decided to kick it in these holes and recovered easily on the short onside type kick. La Porte did not even have to line up like an onside kick to recover it.
La Porte again made it look easy and drove down the field capped off by a Whitely 8 yard TD run. This made the score 21-7 with 3:35 left in the half.
Baytown Sterling made absolutely no adjustments to their kickoff return team. At this point the Bulldogs kicked another easily recovered onside kick. However this one was called back due to offsides on La Porte. La Porte then lined up to kick again and AGAIN the Rangers made no adjustments and the Bulldogs recovered easily AGAIN! This blew my mind. La Porte Senior QB Jeremy McNeal wasted no time running it from 36 yards out for the score.
Now Sterling put an extra guy up front on the ensuing kickoff, still with the same formation, though La Porte seemingly could have onside kicked it again if they wanted. They decided to kick it deep and Chance Nelson returned it for a touchdown to make the score 28-14 Bulldogs.
Just before halftime McNeal broke another big touchdown run to make it 35-14 and the Bulldogs were in complete control. Sterling only had the ball on offense 3 times the whole first half, with two 3 and outs.
La Porte controlled the second half putting up 3 touchdowns and Sterling score late against the second string Bulldog defense to make the final score 56-21 La Porte.
Jeremy McNeal was once again the player of the game. He supplied electrifying runs, even almost returning a punt for a touchdown. He also started the game at safety on defense. McNeal ended up with 145 yards and a touchdown through the air as well as 131 yards and 2tds rushing.
Anthony Webb also turned in a good performance despite injuring his shoulder and missing the second quarter. He ended up with 113 yards and 2tds.
La Porte's defense looked very good stopping the Nelson-Cletus Mixon 1-2 combo (28 total rushing yards) in the Baytown Sterling backfield. Besides the early big touchdown pass, the Bulldogs defense gave up little until the backups got some field time.
La Porte still had some issues with fumbles and penalites and will have to be better against North Shore this week.
What an exciting week, should be a packed house for La Porte-North Shore with the district lead up for grabs. I will have a preview this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment