West Marion took care of business against rival East Marion for the second consecutive year Friday night with the Trojans shutting out the Eagles 20-0 at home.
The matchup was the first time the Eagles (1-2) were shut out by the Trojans (3-0) since 1979, and West Marion head coach Brad Duncan said he was proud of the defensive effort.
Blaten Norris and Jordyn Mahaffey lived in the Eagles’ backfield all game long and combined for 11 tackles, 7.5 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks, and Duncan said he really liked the way West Marion’s linebackers and secondary ran to the ball and contained East Marion quarterback Devin Daniels.
“The key was D-Man (Daniels). D-Man is the difference between them being OK and not being OK. He’s really a good player. He broke a long run against us and ran out of gas a little bit, but he’s their guy,” he said. “Blaten Norris was a dog inside; I ain’t lying.”
East Marion head coach Kevin Jackson said the Eagles’ offensive line, which is typically the strength of the team, needs to get better as it battles injuries.
“We got to get more physical up front. We did have a couple guys out on the offensive line, which was a hindrance to us. But the next man has to be ready, and we have to be more physical up front,” he said.
West Marion sophomore Octavious Harvey opened the scoring two minutes into the second quarter, catching a screen pass out of the backfield from Jeremiah Holmes and knifing through the East Marion defense behind a wall of blockers for a 15-yard touchdown. Brian Blakeney added the extra point to make it 7-0.
Midway through the second quarter, Daniels found a wide open Kevin Johnson deep down the middle of the field for a 60-yard gain, but Johnson was stripped by Jartavious Martin at the West Marion 9 and it was recovered by the Trojans.
It was a sign of things to come for the East Marion offense as it couldn’t finish drives, and Jackson said it was like taking one step forward and two steps back.
“The penalties we had did feel that way. We got the fumble down there that was questionable. That hurt us when we had a long pass then had a fumble that was a really tight, questionable call because the guy was down from where I was standing,” he said. “We set ourselves back a few times on some drives.”
The fumble was an extremely close call as Johnson’s right knee hit the right ground right as Martin ripped the ball loose.
The Trojans took advantage on the ensuing drive, marching 94 yards down the field and chewing up the remaining five minutes on the clock, and Harvey capped it off by catching a quick pass in the flat and breaking a tackle to score from 12 yards out. The PAT was no good, and the Trojans took a 13-0 lead into halftime.
Jartavious “Tater Rabbit” Martin added some cushion to the lead with 4:42 remaining in the third quarter, following a pulling Norris up the gut for a 10-yard touchdown. Blakeney connected on his second extra point of the game to make it 20-0.
The Eagles had a golden opportunity to make it a ball game early in the fourth quarter after recovering a muffed punt on the West Marion 1.
‘However, East Marion couldn’t get out of its own way and lost 25 yards on the drive and couldn’t get on the scoreboard.
“Any time you get in the red zone and don’t get any points it’s demoralizing. That’s at any level,” Jackson said.
Duncan said wins are hard to come by, and even though the game wasn’t pretty the Trojans won’t complain about earning their third W of the season, especially against the Eagles.
“Any time you can win in the East-West game that’s big,” he said. “I told my kids all week East has got pride, they were going to come out and play hard and they did. They played really, really hard. You can tell a big difference between the film we saw on them and the way they played Friday night. They’re only going to get better, and I think they’re going to have a good season in their division.”
Duncan added West Marion left some meat on the bone offensively, but it allows the Trojans room for growth.
“We had about 380 yards of offense, but we just didn’t put it in the end zone enough. We had 219 yards rushing and 161 passing. We threw the ball around a little bit more, but we had chances to make some really big plays passing wise and didn’t execute,” he said.
Duncan said the Trojans have a lot of little things to work on offensively, including executing double team blocks, linemen getting to the second level to block linebackers, receivers blocking better on the perimeter with how Harvey and Martin like to bounce runs to the outside, getting more consistent snaps and quarterbacks carrying out their fakes.
“The good thing is all these things are fixable. All these things are coachable,” he said. “It’s not like we’re getting outclassed or anything. We just have to touch up and fix up some stuff.”
Duncan lauded junior offensive lineman Teddy Williams’ blocking, though, and said his power was a sight to see Friday night.
Jackson said although the Eagles would rather be 3-0 than 1-2 to start the year, he isn’t worried about how they will respond because they’ve played through adversity before.
“This senior group has played through this before. We started out the same way last year, and the ultimate goal is still at hand and that’s to win a state championship. We haven’t started district play, and when we get to district play I think we’ll be OK,” he said.
Pictured Above: West Marion receiver Larry Magee gets to the corner on a jet sweep Friday night in West’s 20-0 win. | Photo by Susan Amundson
