FOOTBALL: Hornets make statement vs. Pinckneyville
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ Nashville steamrolled the Pinckneyville defense for 428 yards rushing, pouncing on the Panthers in continuous-clock fashion 55-6 on Friday night, spoiling the return of quarterback Bryant Shute to the PCHS lineup.
Tyler Meyer (8 carries for 170 yards) and Gannon Mamell (12-153) both eclisped the 150-yard mark running the football, and Hornets QB Brady Harre added 6 pass completions for 108 yards in the rout.
"That's probably one of the best exhibitions of an offensive line I've seen in a long, long time. I thought (Nashville) played outstanding," said Panthers' head coach Tod Rushing. "We didn't play particularly well, but a lot of that goes to them, they played outstanding ball, on the offensive side especially."
Mamell's damage on the ground doesn't tell the whole story of how dominant the senior running back was, however. On the opening kickoff, Mamell got a huge hole to run through and took it 84 yards for the touchdown to stun the Panthers just 13 seconds into the game.
The Panthers went backwards on their initial drive, but after the offense punted it back to the Hornets, Pinckneyville's Caleb Howard recovered a Nashville fumble at his team's eight-yard line to momentarily prevent further damage. It would be one of very few mistakes the Hornets would make the entire evening.
A pass interference flag gave the Panthers a first down at their own 20, but three plays later, they would punt again.
The Hornets' offense went to work, getting big chunks of yardage on nearly every running attempt.
Meyer ran through the left side for a gain of 15 on the drive's first play, then ran a very similar play on the next down for a 25-yard gain down to the Panthers' 21.
Mamell and Chris Storey had runs to take the ball to the 9, and from there Mamell ran a sweep to the right and got excellent blocking to clear a path for the score. Nashville led 14-0 with 43.7 seconds left in the opening quarter.
"It's 14-0 and we've barely touched the ball, that's tough, especially against a good team," said Rushing. "They came out ready to play tonight, I thought we came out a little apprehensive on defense."
The Panthers hung in there, as the offense drove to the Nashville 40-yard line behind a 7-yard run by J.D. Conner and a 21-yard completion from Shute to Justin Hale.
On third-and-seven from the Hornets' 37, Shute found Adam Barczewski for the Panthers' only score of the game. Travis Newman would sneak through the line and block the extra point to keep it 14-6 in favor of Nashville with 10:51 to go in the half.
From there, the strength of Nashville's line took over the game, springing Meyer for a 63-yard touchdown just two plays into their next drive, then forcing a three-and-out by the Panthers to set up a 90-yard drive that ended with Mamell dragging a pair of defenders into the end zone for a 28-6 Hornets lead.
Shute connected with Hale for a nice gain on Pinckneyville's next possession, but the offense sputtered again and had to punt it back to the Hornets, who went right back to work moving the football.
"I thought (Shute) made a couple of nice throws that we dropped, but overall he played really well," Rushing said. "Even with a year's experience he was still a little rusty, this is week one to him, For three weeks he didn't get hardly any reps in practice, no game experience, and it's twice as fast when you get out there in a game."
Brady Harre found his brother Bryce Harre for a 34-yard agin to set up Meyer's second touchdown, a 13-yard run with 2:26 left in the half.
Shute was intercepted by Meyer on the next Panther drive, and the Hornets kept pouring it on, going 59 yards to set up Mamell's fourth score of the night.
Meyer's 33-yard touchdown run with 8:11 to go in the third quarter put the Hornets up by 42 points, and the clock would run for the remainder of the game.
Pinckneyville's running game was bottled up by the Hornets all night long. Neil Kellerman led the Panthers with 21 yards on his 6 carries, Conner added 15 yards, also on 6 carries.
Shute managed only 12 yards on 11 carries, but did complete 11-of-22 passes for 144 yards.
"They did a nice job of spying (Shute)," said Rushing. "They took Bryant's running game away from us tonight. We felt like it was really hard to find an opening to run against, they did a nice job on that."
The Panthers (1-4, 0-2) return to Quillman Field in week six looking to erase the memories of 26 consecutive losses to Du Quoin as they host the Indians on homecoming night at PCHS.
"(Our players) didn't take this (loss) well, they didn't like it," Rushing said. "I know they'll be ready to come back and start working Monday morning."
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