Football: Dixon finds mojo after halftime, pulls away from Oregon

DIXON – One play into Friday’s game, Dixon had already amassed 99 yards of offense. And even though it took until the second half for the Dukes to find the end zone again, their defense still had them in total control.

After some fireworks on its first snap, Dixon struggled to finish off drives until finding its mojo again in the second half, and the Dukes went on to defeat Big Northern foe Oregon 35-0 at A.C. Bowers Field.

“It’s a great feeling knowing that it’s not just the defense that’s doing the hard work and heavy lifting,” senior lineman Aidan Hoggard said. “The offense come out and work their butts off too. It’s a good feeling knowing that both sides can really do some work. I love it.”

Oregon (0-2, 0-2 BNC) dominated time of possession in the first quarter, but couldn’t get its offense on track. Dixon, meanwhile, set a school record for the longest touchdown pass with a 99-yard strike from Cullen Shaner to Eli Davidson on its first play from scrimmage. The old record was a 90-yard scoring strike from John Wooten to Paul Ackerman against Princeton in 1956.

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The play was set up by an Oregon punt rolling dead at the 1-yard line. Shaner connected with Davidson 30 yards down the field before Davidson outran the defense for a 6-0 lead.

“It was obviously a great punt, stuck us down at the 1, and we just had the right play called up,” Shaner said. “Coach said to look at him if they had two high safeties. They had one high safety, so I was just going to trust the best player on the team. I threw it up to him and he took it for 6.”

“I was lined up looking at their coverage pre-snap and I see a single high safety. I’m expecting somebody to roll back there, because when I looked across and saw one-on-one, I didn’t believe it,” Davidson said. “But I knew we had it dialed up for me to go deep, and I took off – and I didn’t have to slow down at all. He put that pass right in the basket, and I just kept running and beat them to the pylon.”

The rest of the first half was a defensive struggle. Dixon (2-0, 2-0) took over possession inside Oregon territory on two of its next three drives but settled for two Caleb Carlson field goals on those three possessions.

But the Dukes’ defense limited the Hawks to 68 total yards in the first half – all on the ground – to make it 12-0 Dixon headed into halftime.

“There was a zero on the scoreboard at halftime, but it didn’t feel like it,” Davidson said. “They came out and punched us in the mouth, credit to them, but we flipped a switch at halftime. We had a lot of things to clean up, and in the second half we really did that.”

Oregon forced a punt on Dixon’s first possession of the second half, but the Dixon D stepped it up even more, limiting the Hawks to negative yardage in the third quarter while the offense found its groove.

A bad snap on an Oregon punt gave Dixon the ball at the Hawks’ 12-yard line, and Shaner connected with Davidson for another TD on the next play. The defense forced a second straight three-and-out, and the offense covered 50 yards in five plays, with Shaner running in from 15 yards out for a 27-0 lead.

Another three-and-out by the Dixon defense set the Dukes up at the Oregon 33, and six plays later, Shaner hit Gabe Rowley from 11 yards out on fourth-and-goal for a 35-0 lead less than two minutes into the fourth quarter.

“Our goal is to score in the red zone. We struggled with that in the first half, but in our halftime huddle, we just said we have to score the ball,” Shaner said. “Our O-line was giving us good looks, we just had to execute. We knew we needed to run the ball, so when we got into the red zone in the second half, we just pounded it, and that opened up the pass game.”

Shaner was 9-for-17 for 153 yards and three touchdowns through the air and added 88 yards and a TD on eight rushes. Davidson had four catches for 121 yards and two scores and also ran eight times for 58 yards. Owen Belzer added 50 yards on three carries for the Dukes, who also had 11 tackles for loss on defense.

“They were kind of punching us in the face the first quarter, and coaches at halftime shut that down quick. They got on us to do something about it, and we went out and did,” Hoggard said. “We had to hold our gap on D, and not to let Cullen get touched on offense. We did that again tonight.”

Playing without their top two quarterbacks due to illness and injury, the Hawks managed just 84 yards of total offense. Logan Weems had 21 carries for 60 yards, and Hunter Bartel added 24 yards on 10 rushes.

“I was super happy with the way our defense played there in the first half, and even in the second half. It’s just right now, we’re trying to figure ourselves out,” Oregon coach Broc Kundert said. “We had our three-year starting quarterback go down, then we had our backup go down last week, so we’re on our third guy right now. We’ve had to make a pretty monumental shift to a new offense, because we felt like that’s what’s best for our guys right now. We moved the ball OK at times, kept it out of their hands early, but it’s something that’s got to get greased up, it’s got to have time to gel, so we’ll get there.”