Seneca solid on both sides of the ball in 49-16 win over Hoopeston Area

SENECA – For the second straight week, the Seneca football team used its power-T offensive attack to run to victory.

In Friday night’s Vermillion Valley Conference crossover in the Fighting Irish’s home opener, the home squad rolled up 477 yards on the ground, and the defense held Hoopeston Area/Armstrong-Potomac off the scoreboard in the second half to register a solid 49-16 triumph.

Seneca, like last week, had a trio of 100-plus-yard rushers, led by Braden Ellis (11 carries, 125 yards), Asher Hamby (8-118) and Dominick Griffin (8-112), with quarterback Nathan Grant also running 11 times for 69 yards.

“We talked at halftime about how no amount of points is good enough with the athletes Hoopeston has,” said Seneca head coach Terry Maxwell, whose club held a 29-16 advantage at the break. “We wanted to come out and dominate on the ground and hopefully finish the second half like we didn’t do last week down at Westville.

“This is still a young team with a lot of juniors that are learning on the job and learning how to win. These first two weeks are going to help with those things and, hopefully, we can continue to play as we have from here on out.”

Seneca (2-0) forced a three-and-out on the Cornjerkers (0-2) first possession, then took the lead for good on a 19-yard TD run by Griffin.

Hoopeston took an 8-7 lead on a 27-yard scoring dash by Anthony Zamora, but the hosts responded with Grant scoring from the 1 on the first play of the second quarter. Later, Ellis raced for a 56-yard TD to make it 22-8.

The Cornjerkers closed to within 22-16, but with 12.7 seconds left before halftime, Grant hit Lane Provance for a 10-yard touchdown pass to give Seneca a 13-point halftime lead.

“Our offensive line was super good tonight,” said Ellis, who also picked off two passes. “They were not only opening holes everywhere, they were getting a great push on almost every single play. No matter how tired they are, they are always giving every play the best they have. They made us guys that run the ball look really good tonight.”

The Irish opened the second half with a seven-play, 65-yard drive ending with a TD run from the 3 by Ellis to push the lead to 35-16. Then, after forcing a punt, Hamby, who also had four tackles for loss and a pair of sacks on defense, scored on a 59-yard gallop to make it 43-16.

“I don’t think we saw anything tonight from Hoopeston that we weren’t really expecting on either side of the ball,” Hamby said. “We had watched a lot of film on them, but it really just came down to how well our line played. They just ran them over.

“My job tonight was to just follow the quarterback wherever he went. There were a couple of times I knew what play was coming before the snap, but most of tonight was just reacting to what I saw.”

The final points of the night came midway in the fourth quarter when Grant again hooked up with Provance, this time from 28-yards out.

Grant finished 3 of 5 for 45 yards and two scores. The Irish defense allowed 213 total yards, 91 on the ground.

Kysen Klicker also had an interception for Seneca, while Aiden Wood, Matt Dillon, Chris Peura, and Klinker recorded tackles for loss.

“We did an excellent job with our fakes and that is something we pride ourselves on,” Maxwell said. “We call it ghosting. If the defense is seeing ghosts and not sure where the ball is, that normally means good things are going to happen for us.

“It did tonight.”