Marquette dominates 41-6 after long road trip to Madison

MADISON – There are a lot of things that can throw a team off when hitting the road for the first time in a football season, as Marquette Academy did in traveling to St. Louis suburb Madison on Friday night.

But for the Crusaders, sitting on a bus for three and a half hours didn’t prove to be one of those things.

After climbing off the bus and stretching their legs a bit, the Cru got rolling on their very first possession, needing only five plays to march half the field to a 12-yard touchdown run by Rush Keefer and start them on their way to a 41-6 victory over the Trojans.

Grant Dose, who led MA to the dominating 56-6 win over Madison a year ago in Ottawa, was again the lead protagonist with 16 carries for 124 yards and a score, while backfield mate Payton Gutierrez added 13 tries for 101 yards and two TDs.

Quarterback Anthony Couch also connected with tight end Keaton Davis for their third touchdown of the season as Marquette posted a whopping 437 yards of offense on the night.

Meanwhile, with the Cru defensive line spending almost as much time in the Madison backfield as Trojans quarterback Dallas Gardner, Marquette’s defense as a whole was superb, limiting the hosts to a single rushing yard on 15 carries and a total of 75 yards on the night, also adding a safety.

That yardage included their only TD, Gardner’s 64-yard pass to Darius Williams in the second quarter.

“Tonight might have been effective, but it certainly wasn’t pretty,” Marquette coach Tom Jobst said. “I think the kids adapted well to what they got. Sometimes you see stuff, and they’d run things not quite what we’d seen, but we saw a lot of it. They gave us a good dose, but it worked out OK.

“Defensively, we did a great job of putting pressure on (Gardner). He wasn’t afraid to throw it out there, and it only hurt us once. … It was a good night. I’m not unhappy, but we have work to do.”

Dose ran three times for 37 yards to set up Keefer’s 12-yard sweep left to the end zone and Sam Mitre’s PAT kick on their first series.

A bad punt snap caused Gardner (also the Trojans punter) to be trapped in the end zone by the Cru’s Blayden Cassel for a safety to make it 9-0 before the Couch-to-Davis connection pulled out a 36-yard aerial to paydirt to widen the gap to 16-0.

Madison answered with its only score, but a 56-yard run by Connor Baker led to a 6-yard TD burst by Gutierrez. Dose closed out the first half with his 4-yard scoring jaunt, opening up a 29-6 halftime margin.

“I guess I do like playing these guys,” said Dose, who last year against Madison ran for a team-high 90 yards and three TDs. “They don’t play as physical as some teams we’ve seen when you meet head-to-head. We just ran hard like we’re supposed to, and everyone had a good night.

“It’s determination. When you lose your first game on a Friday night, it’s full of emotions, and you go into the next week determined to win. You just want to play hard and win. That’s what I do. That’s what we all did.”

Dose had runs of 17, 18 and 7 yards to put Gutierrez in position for his 4-yard TD in the third period, and Gutierrez cut loose for 25 yards to set up the final Cru score, an 11-yard sweep by Jakoby Gooden.

The Crusaders open up play in the Chicagoland Prairie Conference next Friday at 7 p.m. at Gould Stadium against neighboring defending league champion Seneca.