Marquette Crusaders use big plays to topple Stark County

OTTAWA – Traditionally, the Marquette Academy football teams under head coach Tom Jobst have been a grind-it-out, 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, Wing-T attack that wears down opponents to the point of surrender.

While the defense did just that Friday night, the offense preferred to gain yards in leaps and bounds.

After fullback Hunter O’Dell gave the Crusaders an 8-0 lead with an 8-yard TD burst and PAT run, Logan Nelson took a Stark County punt back 61 yards for another score. Then, after two big scoring chances went by the wayside due to penalties, Tom Durdan finished off the opening period with a 31-yard touchdown to put the hosts up 22-0.

MA added TD runs by Shane Reynolds and Vinny Battestelli in the fourth quarter to complete a 37-8 rout of the Rebels here at Gould Stadium on Friday night.

“They plugged the middle and took away our inside game, so we had to resort to the outside stuff, and that worked well.”

—  Marquette football coach Tom Jobst

His scoring run of 58 yards in the final quarter left Reynolds with a game-best 111 yards on just six carries, while sophomore quarterback Alex Graham added 61 yards on three tries and Logan Nelson 60 on only seven attempts, as MA (1-1) totaled 259 of its 291 yards on the ground.

Defensively, the Cru surrendered just 173 total yards to SC (0-2), which got 101 yards on 24 carries from fullback Raiden Porter in the loss.

“This was a nice game to get,” said Jobst. “We went through a rough spot there in the middle of the game and let them dominate a whole quarter on us, something we don’t like to see, but the kids pulled through very nicely and hung in there. … For the game, we improved. Our execution was a little crisper on our offense and our defense.

“We had some costly penalties that you never like to see, but thankfully we were able to overcome those and hold on. … We have great team speed, so if we can break away, we’re in pretty good shape. They plugged the middle and took away our inside game, so we had to resort to the outside stuff, and that worked well.”

On the Cru’s second series, a 32-yard pass from Graham to Reynolds and a 12-yard burst by Nelson set up a 15-yard TD run for O’Dell at the 7:05 mark of the first period.

That’s when it got a little crazy.

After the ensuing SC series, Nelson broke right then outran the Rebel for a 61-yard punt return to paydirt. Following the next series, Durdan broke free for what would have been a 74-yard return TD, but that was negated by a penalty.

With the ball on the MA 48 for the very next play, Reynolds broke loose for a 50-plus jaunt, only to have that also called back. The Crusaders ended up with nine penalties for a whopping 80 yards.

However, Durdan intercepted an Ethan Unhold pass at the SC 36, and two plays later he ran it in from 31 out to run the tally to 22-0.

The Rebels, who were shorthanded because of a quarantine situation at their school, bounced back. After an 8-yard score by Porter and a PAT pass Unhold to Daniel Kreiser in the second quarter, a Nelson pick in the end zone later stopped that quarter from getting worse.

The visitors then took over the third with a nine-minute drive that stalled at the Cru 19 when Porter was stopped twice with 1 yard to go.

Reynolds put the icing on the cake in the fourth with his 58-yarder and PAT catch from Graham, and Battestelli chipped in the capper from 10 yards out on the next series.

“We’ve been without six varsity starters on both sides of the ball for the last two weeks,” said Rebels coach Jade Noard, “and we have some kids playing that we’re asking to play a level higher than they’re ready for, some of them in positions they’ve only been in for a week, yet I believe honestly we were in this game against a quality Marquette program for three quarters.

“You’re never overly pleased with a loss, but we played so much better this week than we did last, and we get a lot of our guys back next week, so hopefully we can make some noise then.”