Cougars run wild in win over Vikings

BAINBRIDGE — The story of North Putnam’s successful football season has been a consistent one.

The Cougars have had their opposition play hang with them for the first half, then execute their halftime adjustments to dominate the second half.

Once again that was the case on Friday when the Cougars hosted the West Vigo Vikings for homecoming.

After a 36-22 halftime advantage, North Putnam shut the Vikings out in the second half for a 56-22 victory as they avenged last week’s disappointing loss to Cascade.

“That was all we talked about this week is how are we going to respond after a loss,” Cougars coach Scott Moore said. “We’re trying to change the culture with this program, and we just had to focus on ourselves and we did a great job of that leading up to this game.”

“Offensively we were able to do some pretty good things tonight. We were able to just run the ball all night, so we took the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it mantra. Our offensive line played their tails off and I’m really proud of them.”

It took the Cougars just three plays to score the game’s first points when Griffin Starr scored on a 34-yard touchdown run. The rest of the opening quarter belonged to senior tight end Paxton O’Brien who hauled in touchdowns of eight and 58 yards to make it 21-0 after a quarter.

West Vigo (2-5) got on the board on the first play of the second quarter when Chase Hedden found Connor Wallace from 11 yards out.

A three-yard Christian Kramer run made it 28-7 but the Vikings dug deep into their bag of trick plays and executed a perfect hook and ladder play which resulted in Wallace receiving the pitch from Hedden and running it in from 24 yards out.

With the Cougars leading 36-14 and just 41.4 seconds left in the half, West Vigo did what most teams have done against the Cougars right before intermission and marched right down the field, scoring on the final play of the half when Landon Fields found Hedden, who made a diving catch in the end zone, for a 19-yard score.

“That just seems to be our Achilles’ heel, giving up a score right before half,” Moore said. “We did get out to an early lead which is what we wanted and ended up being huge for us.

“Credit to West Vigo for executing some good trick plays and we just didn’t make some stops that we needed to but we talked about it again at halftime about how we’ve responded in the second half in most of these games and we came out and did the same thing that we’ve done in these wins.”

The kudos to the Cougar offensive line is very well deserved by Moore as his team ran for nearly 500 yards in the win with 491 rushing yards on 42 attempts. Kramer had 245 with Wes Murphy adding 156 of his own.

Through the air the Cougars didn’t have to do much but managed to add in 123 yards to end the night with 614 yards of total offense.

North Putnam’s defense forced three turnovers, all interceptions, with one even coming on a fake punt that the Vikings tried to fool the Cougars on, but to no avail.

The game was very chippy to say the least as both teams combined for 18 penalties for 166 yards.

The win moved the Cougars to 6-1 on the season and they will now hit the road to take on Brown County next Friday. The week after that will conclude the regular season against rival Greencastle.

Moore talked about the importance of these final two weeks and what he’s looking to see from his team.

“Positionally, we have to sharpen some things up,” he said. “There’re some things on defense that we still have to iron out. Brown County will throw the ball around a bit and have some veteran guys who have played a lot of football. Then of course we have that rivalry game with Greencastle. It stays with just taking things one game at a time and make sure we’re continually improving as the sectional is right around the corner.”

Scoring

1st Quarter

NP: Griffin Starr 36-yard run, XP Good, 11:04, 7-0

NP: Paxton O’Brien 5-yard pass from Christian Kramer, XP Good, 5:14, 14-0

NP: Paxton O’Brien 48-yard pass from Christian Kramer, XP Good, 3:39, 21-0

2nd Quarter

WV: Connor Wallace 11-yard pass from Chase Hedden, XP Good, 11:53, 21-7

NP: Christian Kramer 3-yard run, XP Good, 8:44, 28-7

WV: Connor Wallace 24-yard run, XP Good, 3:25, 28-14

NP: Hudson Rowe 1-yard run, 2 pt conversion Good, 41.4, 36-14

WV: Chase Hedden 19-yard pass from Landon Fields, 2 pt conversion Good, 0:00, 36-22

3rd Quarter

NP: Wes Murphy 3-yard run, XP Good, 4:00, 43-22

4th Quarter

NP: Christian Kramer 65-yard run, XP blocked, 11:49, 49-22

NP: Owen Thurman 4-yard run, XP Good, 2:20, 56-22

Team Stats

Individual Stats

Rushing: WV (Jacob Dewey 14-79, Ryan Cobb 9-0, Connor Wallace 10-81TD, Landon Fields 5-22, Chase Hedden 4-9, Team 1(-1)); NP (Christian Kramer 18-245 2TD, Wes Murphy 17-156 TD, Griffin Starr 2-64 TD, Hudson Rowe 1-1 TD, Owen Thurman 4-25 TD)

Receiving: WV (Chase Hedden 4-48 TD, Ryan Cobb 2-11, Connor Wallace 1-11 TD, Alan Ramirez 4-58, Jacob Dewey 1-12, Blake Elkins 1-10); NP (Paxton O’Brien 3-63 2TD, Chase Barber 2-37, Wes Murphy 4-15, Kaden Helderman 2-8)

Passing: WV (Landon Fields 11-24 131 TD 2INT, Chase Hedden 2-3 19 TD, Reese Wilbur 0-1 INT); NP (Christian Kramer 8-13 82 2TD, Owen Thurman 3-4 41)