Leonardo
By JAMIE BAKER
- THE COURIER
CAREY — It seemed as if Carey was running downhill all night against Hopewell-Loudon. The Blue Devils racked up 544 yards rushing and scored 10 touchdowns on its way to demolishing the Chieftains 68-14 at C.D. Wentling Field Friday night.
The win kept Carey in the hunt in the Midland Athletic League race, one game behind leaders Fremont St. Joseph and Mohawk, as the Blue Devils improved to 5-3 overall and 4-1 in the MAL.
The loss, Hopewell-Loudon’s third in its last four games, dropped the Chieftains to 5-3 and 1-3 and put a sizable dent in the team’s playoff hopes.
“Carey knows how to run the football and they did a really good job of that tonight,” said Hopewell-Loudon coach Jeremy Nutter. "They are pretty darn good up front. They made some nice cuts and we seemed not to be able to keep our footing out here. We just didn’t play very well defensively.”
Carey’s offensive line opened plenty of holes and the running backs ran through would-be tackles much like they did in last week’s 66-36 win over North Baltimore.
“It’s probably been awhile since we had back to back games where we put it together the way we needed too,” Carey coach Todd Worst said. “I thought we executed pretty well. Even after Bryce got hurt, we didn’t miss a beat. When he got hurt, our linemen stepped it up. We made some nice runs and broke some tackles.”
Even though he’d been dinged up in recent weeks, Orians moved back into the starting quarterback spot and made an immediate impact. He ran for 132 yards on six carries running for touchdowns of 55 and 17 yards before leaving the game with a shoulder injury after his second score late in the first quarter.
Hopewell-Loudon quarterback Tyler Tyree hit Austin Harrison for a 70-yard touchdown pass on Hopewell-Loudon’s second play from scrimmage. Tyree, who was 17 of 32 passing for 234 yards and two interception, also added a 1-yard touchdown sneak early in the second quarter to help the Chieftains close the gap to 20-14.
At that point, Worst was a little concerned about being able to keep Hopewell-Loudon’s offense in check.
“I didn’t know if we were going to be able to stop them early. I didn’t want this to be a track meet,” Worst said. “Defensively, we got a couple turnovers and we got that interception in the third quarter, in my mind, that kind of sealed it.”
It was Carey’s defense, led by noseguard Brandon Fausnaugh, who had a huge night that included blocked punt, got its act together and shut down Hopewell-Loudon’s offense.
The Chieftains drove deep into Carey territory twice in the first half but came away empty-handed.
Carey’s Dylan Cole recovered a fumble on the Carey 16-yard line to snuff out one threat that eventually led to Orians’ 17-yard touchdown. Justin Meek picked off a Tyree pass in the second quarter that led to a 20-yard touchdown run by Tyler Cusac. Alek Niederkohr recovered another H-L fumble at the 8 on the Chieftains’ final drive of the first half.
“They are a good football team. They played great and they are hard to tackle,” Nutter said. “You can’t turn the ball over against them and that’s what we did tonight.”
It was all Carey in the second half. Tschanen, who rushed for 148 yards on 14 carries and scored five touchdown, added scoring runs covering 3, 3 and 53 yards in the second half.
Dustin Massie and Ross Wentling added touchdown runs of 8 and 5 yards in the fourth quarter to finish things off.
There’s no talk of climbing back into the playoff picture or worrying about the MAL standings at Carey, at least not yet. The focus now is on next week’s game at Seneca East and a chance to get win No. 6.
“We play to win the next game, and then wait and see what happens. We can’t do anything else but win the last two games,” Worst said. “Some teams that lose a few games may give up. We don’t let up. We’re just going to try and win and watch the numbers at the end.”