FOOTBALL: Early hole too deep for Du Quoin against A-J
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Anna-Jonesboro came to Du Quoin's Van Metre Field this past Friday at 3-0 on the season, but still not getting a whole lot of respect after wins over West Frankfort, Murphysboro, and Massac County, three teams that after week four have combined for just three victories.
They left with a 26-14 road victory and the early distinction of "the team to beat" in the Southern Illinois River-to-River Conference's Mississippi Division, as Du Quoin fell behind 20-0 and ran out of time before the Wildcats ran out of gas.
"(Anna-Jonesboro) did a good job defending us," said Indians' head coach Al Martin. "We didn't do a great job blocking up front at times because of the things that they did. They were quicker off of the ball, they were quicker to the ball, they were quicker running the ball, they were a quicker and more aggressive team than we were (Friday) night."
"The beat us to the perimeter, the edge of the field many times."
Neither team could get much going on offense in the opening quarter. The Indians had some mild success on the ground in their opening drive, but stalled near midfield and had to punt it away.
Du Quoin's defense was up to the challenge early, however, forcing three-and-outs by the Wildcats on their first two tries.
The Indians began on their own 29-yard line for the third drive with 3:40 to go in the opening quarter, and Sam Gossett had runs of 12 and 11 yards to set up first-and-ten at the A-J 47 with under two minutes left in the quarter. A 20-yard completion from Gossett-to-Williams had Du Quoin on the brink of the red zone, but a pair of short runs and a pair of incomplete passes turned the ball over to Anna-Jonesboro at their own 23.
"We were just a little bit away from scoring one or two touchdowns (early)," Martin said. "We'd have a mistake here and there, kind of like the Harrisburg game, in the first half. When you play good ball clubs, you have to try to eliminate mistakes. The kids make mistakes, I make mistakes on play-calling, and when you're playing a very good ball club like this, you've got to be clicking on all cylinders."
Nine plays and 77 yards later, the Wildcats had drawn first blood. Quarterback Brady Wright, who did much of the damage on the drive running the option, connected with Brent Taylor for a 14-yard touchdown.
Du Quoin tried to answer right back, but Gossett was picked off by Taylor at the A-J 29 with 3:40 left in the half. A 32-yard pass from Wright-to-Taylor helped set up Taylor's 3-yard touchdown run with 1:14 to go, and the Wildcats led 14-0 at the break.
The Indians came up with the stop they had to have after kicking off to begin the third, but after another three-and-out, had to punt it away. Taylor returned the kick up the sideline all the way to the Indians' 29, and on fourth-and-five from the 24, Wright fired to Dalton Baker in the end zone for a slick six points and a 20-0 lead.
"Normally when you prepare for A-J, you've got to stop their option game," Martin said. "They run the option about three different ways and we feel like you have to stop that, but this year they're throwing the ball so much."
"So, you didn't have as much preparation time, your concentration is stopping their pass and their quarterback. We didn't think he was as mobile as he was. It was a tough week to prepare. We get on the kids about the preparation, but it was difficulties for us as coaches to prepare for. If they can play that good week in and week out, they're going to be a handful."
The Wildcats tried to pull a fast one on the kickoff, but the attempted onside kick was recovered by Josh Sanders for DHS at the Indians' 42. The ten-play drive for Du Quoin ended with a one-yard plunge from Trevon Jones, and A-J led 20-7 with 11:58 left in the ball game.
The Indians got another big defensive stop and A-J was left looking at fourth-and-eleven from the Du Quoin 41 with 7:50 to go, but John Galik couldn't handle the punt, and the Wildcats recovered the muff just nine yards away from the end zone.
Taylor went in untouched two plays later, and the game was out of reach at 26-7.
Gossett dove in for a 5-yard TD with 4:17 to go, but A-J recovered the onside kick and was able to run out the majority of the game clock.
"They had us back on our heels, we couldn't get into the flow of things," Martin said.
"They took away a couple plays away from us that we had success with last year and that takes away a lot of your offense. We're a five or six play running team, we were still able to throw the ball for some big yardage, we were able to run our fullback for some big yardage, but they took away some plays to our halfback. That really hurt us, we've got to be able to counter that. We didn't get the job done with our blocking scheme."
Baker (11 carries, 79 yards) and Wright (23-75) led the rushing attack for the Wildcats, which totaled 170 of the team's 264 total yards on offense. Wright also completed 5-of-8 passes, 3 to Taylor for 50 yards and 2 to Baker for 44.
Deeja Cole had a pair of carries for 51 yards to lead the Indians. Williams (8-44), Jones (11-36), Gossett (5-34) and Diggins (11-19) also carried for DHS. Gossett was good on 5-of-12 passes for 69 yards.
Both teams were penalized eight times in the ball game, Du Quoin for 65 yards, A-J for 55.
The Indians (2-2, 0-1) travel to Sparta (0-4, 0-1) in week five.
</group><group id="BE6EA956-EC82-453C-A588-4118157C698A" type="seoLabels"><seoLabels></seoLabels></group>