Eagles dominate Mustangs on homecoming

Mother Nature tried to ruin homecoming festivities for the A No. 6 South Putnam Eagles on Friday night when they hosted the Edgewood Mustangs.

A near hour and half weather delay wouldn’t stop the Eagles from dominating the visiting Mustangs 49-0.

From the opening minute, South Putnam (3-2) and its defense set the tone.

Edgewood turned the ball over on its first three possessions of the game, including the second play of the game when Keenan Mowery-Shields intercepted Mustang QB Michael Law. That set up a one-play touchdown as Mowery-Shields was rewarded with the score.

The second possession was the same result for the Eagle defense when Wyatt Mullin picked off the pass and the next possession the Mustangs fumbled.

“We’ve been really working really hard against ourselves these last few weeks,” Eagle coach Chuck Sorrell said. “This is two weeks in a row now where we’ve gotten after it in practice, and it’s really paid off in the game.

“Our tackling was way better and so was our coverage in the secondary as we have multiple packages that can give teams fits. We’ve caused a lot of turnovers the last two weeks because of it.”

As the second quarter got underway, Brier Cook had runs of 18 and 58 yards to set up a three-yard score when the game was put on hold due to lightning.

Ninety-plus minutes later, both teams were out on the field to resume play.

Despite the lengthy delay, that didn’t effect the Eagles, who came out just like the began the game. With 5:07 left in the half Benton got his second score of the game on a 17-yard scamper. With 26.1 left in the half, Mullin got in on the scoring action with a seven-yard run of his own.

Looking like they’d go into halftime up 36-0, Bransyn Ensor had other plans as he intercepted the Mustang pass and took it 40 yards to the house to make it 42-0 as the Eagles scored 14 points in just 18 seconds.

“It’s hard to keep them motivated when you’re in a long delay like that,” Sorrell added. “We still played very well after just sitting there for so long. We can make some teams pay if they choose to kick it deep to us and Bransyn did just that. All-around we cleaned up a lot of areas and I’m proud of that.”

The Eagles had 288 total yards of offense with 248 of that coming on the ground. Benton had 81 yards with Cook having 88 of his own. Freshman Kason Ames came in and ran for 46 yards.

Edgewood (2-3) was held to just 87 total yards and ran for 32 yards on exactly 32 attempts.

South Putnam was tested early on in their first four games of the season. After a 28-20 win over Speedway, the Eagles fell against 2A No. 4 Indianapolis Lutheran 34-12, followed bya heart-breaking 23-22 loss against rival North Putnam. Last week the Eagles got back on track with a dominant 41-14 win over WIC foe Greencastle and Sorrell says that early season test has made his team that much better.

“I wanted to see how good we were early on,” he said. “We had a lot of things to fix in those four games and if we play like we did tonight against Lutheran and North Putnam, I like our chances. Now we’re just focused on the second-half of the season and winning each game that is in front of us one at a time.

“Our big ultimate goal is to win games in the tournament and the sectional is right around the corner and I think we have as good of a chance as anyone, then we’ll just go from there.”

South Putnam will hit the road next week when they travel to take on West Vigo while Edgewood will be back at home hosting Indian Creek.

Scoring

1Q

SP: Keenan Mowery-Shields 6 yd run, XP blocked, 11:06; 6-0

SP: Ty Benton 2 yd run, 2 pt conversion Good, 6:22, 14-0

2Q

Brier Cook 3 yd run, 2 pt conversion good, 11:57; 22-0

Ty Benton 17 yd run XP no good, 5:07; 28-0

Wyatt Mullin 7 yd run, 2 pt conversion good, 26.1; 36-0

Bransyn Ensor 40 yd interception return, XP no good; 42-0

3Q

Bransyn Ensor 65 yd kick return, XP Good; 11:45; 49-0

Team Stats

Individual Stats

Rushing: EDG (Michael Law 13-25, Jaxton Collier 2(-8), Braxton Carpenter 1-8, Gunnar Perry 1-0, Eli Lirot 11-50, Anthony Livingston 1(-1), Team 3 (-42); SP (Ty Benton 10-81 2TD, Wyatt Mullin 4-23 TD, Brier Cook 5-88 TD, Keenan Mower-Shields 1-6 TD, Kason Ames 11-46, Robert Speth 1-4)

Receiving: EDG (Braxton Carpenter 4-47, Noah Cosby 1-8); SP (Bransyn Ensor 1-30, Stiles Stauch 1-8, Team 1-2)

Passing: EDG (Michael Law 5-14 55 3INT); SP (Wyatt Mullin 2-9 38, Dallas Mullin 1-2 2)