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FOOTBALL: Sack-happy Indians rout Highland

Posted August 29, 2011 11:00 pm

Doug Daniels

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A spectacular performance by the Du Quoin offensive and defensive lines helped to control the line of scrimmage all night against 5A Highland on Friday, as the Indians cruised to a 41-0 opening week victory, their eighth straight win of such variety since losing to Highland back in 2003.

"When you go on the road, if you can stay away from penalties and stay away from turnovers and play great defense, that's going to keep you in the ball games," said Indians' head coach Al Martin. "The defense, I think, gave us momentum early and it's funny how that works, but it really helped our offense. We were able to get our feet on the ground and execute some things."

Ten defensive sacks highlighted an absolutely dominating defensive effort by Du Quoin. In addition to holding the Bulldogs off the scoreboard, the Indians forced four consecutive three-and-outs to start the game and held Highland to negative-eight rushing yards for the game. HHS finished with just 39 yards of total offense.

"That's something that could be a strength of our ball club is the fact that we have the ability to put pressure on the quarterback," Martin said. "Those kids did a good job."

After sputtering for a three-and-out on their first possession, the Indians turned the ball over on downs at the Highland five-yard line on their first opportunity to score.

"I was hoping that wouldn't come back to haunt us," Martin said. "We didn't execute a couple things, I'll take the blame for that. (Highland was) really packing it up inside and we ran a couple plays that we really hadn't worked on that much on our goal line offense."

The Indians' defense got them great field position for their third drive, which started a string of five straight trips into the end zone for the DHS offense.

"The kids came back and we got some more scores, and our punting game did a good job, set us up, we had good field position," said Martin. "From then, we had a lot of people contribute offensively. It was just a solid, balanced, offensive attack."

The first two touchdowns came from 250-lb. Brandon Williams, who plowed his way in from one yard out with 9:50 to go in the first half before adding a second TD with 4:53 remaining, that time from two yards out.

Cayle Diggins broke free for a 46-yard score to make it 21-0 with 2:13 left in the second quarter, then less than a minute into the third quarter, Austin Mansker scored from 11 yards out to pile on six more. Mansker added a 25-yard run for a touchdown with 4:59 left in the third, then Tim Mabrey fell on a muffed punt in the Bulldogs' end zone to get the continuous clock moving with 11:09 remaining in the ball game.

"It's not the end of the world," said Bulldogs' head coach Jim Warnecke, Jr. "It's never as good as you think, it's never as bad as you think. We had two guys at quarterback playing their first varsity game and I think it showed, but we'll learn from it."

Warnecke had been an offensive coordinator at Breese Mater Dei before this season, which meant Martin and company were left to ignore past contests with the Bulldogs.

"We didn't even look at any Highland film from when we played them before," said Martin. "Their coach had been the offensive coordinator at a very successful program, so we tried to look at what they did, and that was beneficial to us because if you're an offensive coordinator at a school with the success they've had in the last few years, you have to feel pretty confident about the offense that they're running."

But it was the big boys up front for DHS that ended up showing their confidence with six first half sacks to help build a 21-0 halftime lead before adding four more in the final two quarters.

"I think the kids up front put a lot of pressure on the running and the passing game," said Martin. "They did a good job up front and our linebackers played well. The linebackers are going to play well whenever you can keep people off of them the way those people up front can. The kids up front played well and they got good effort, and we were able to rest them and get fresh kids in there, and then those kids played well. I think it all starts offensively and defensively up front."

In week two, Du Quoin (1-0) travels to Harrisburg (1-0) to meet another Bulldogs team at 7:00 p.m. this Friday night. Harrisburg won on the road at Mt. Carmel in week one.

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