Offensive woes hurt Pirates in loss to Buckeye Valley

By ROB HAMILTON

Card­ing­ton was unable to get untracked offen­sively on Fri­day in suf­fer­ing a 29–0 loss to Buck­eye Valley.

The Pirates didn’t get a first down until mid­way through the third quar­ter and Buck­eye Valley’s ball-control offense kept Cardington’s defense on the field for large stretches of time — two things that led to the shutout.

After get­ting the open­ing kick­off, the Barons held the ball for over five min­utes in going 65 yards for a touchdown.

Run­ning back Brad Edmonds opened the drive with a 22-yard run — just one of many big plays by his team. Unfor­tu­nately for the Pirates, many of those long plays came dur­ing long-yardage sit­u­a­tions when it looked like their defense was about to make a stop.

After the Barons had advanced the ball to the Card­ing­ton 35, they got one of those plays when, one third-and-16, quar­ter­back Caleb Green hit Brad Krueger with a pass. The receiver then dodged a cou­ple of tack­les on his way to a 33-yard gain and a first-and-goal from the Pirate two.

Two plays later, Edmonds dove in for the touch­down to give his team a 6–0 lead.

Card­ing­ton would be forced to punt on their first pos­ses­sion and the Barons got the ball back on the Pirate 47.

After los­ing five yards on their first play, it looked like the Barons were court­ing dis­as­ter after a bad snap. How­ever, Green was able to pick up the ball and wound up scram­bling for 47 yards to put his team right back in scor­ing position.

Two plays later, Krueger got the ball on a three-yard carry to make the score 12–0 in favor of the Barons.

After another three-and-out by the Pirates, it looked like Buck­eye Val­ley would score again, as they drive from their 31 to the Pirate nine over the span of more than five minutes.

How­ever, Cardington’s defense would come up big, get­ting an inter­cep­tion from Andy Dever to get the ball back.

Unfor­tu­nately, another quick punt led to another long Buck­eye Val­ley drive. This time, they wound up get­ting a 22-yard field goal by Lane Kleilein to go up 15–0, which is how the score remained going into the half.

Card­ing­ton went three-and-out on their first pos­ses­sion of the third quar­ter, but recov­ered a Baron fum­ble on their five-yard line to stall another Buck­eye Val­ley drive.

Chase Deck­ling imme­di­ately got his team’s ini­tial first down on an 18-yard run, but the team’s drive would stall and the Pirates would have to punt again.

Buck­eye Val­ley would then march down the field on a 51-yard drive that took 10 plays and lasted nearly five min­utes. Dur­ing that drive, they got a 26-yard run by Krueger on a second-and-26 and got a first down on a fourth-and-35 punt after a rough­ing the kicker penalty.

Those plays helped set up a seven-yard scor­ing run by Krueger that gave the Barons a 22–0 lead with under a minute remain­ing in the third.

After a Card­ing­ton inter­cep­tion, Buck­eye Val­ley scored their last touch­down of the game on a 13-yard run by Krueger. Once again, a big gain in a key sit­u­a­tion led to the score, as Krueger ran for 30 yards on a third-and-23 play.

Late in the game, Colton Jenk­ins ran for gains of 10 and 14 yards, but the Pirates were not able to light up the home half of the score­board in the fourth quar­ter, as time ran out with them on the Baron 14.

Deck­ling ran for 27 yards and Jenk­ins had 26 to lead the Card­ing­ton offense. Quar­ter­back Noah Zier­den passed for 10, with both Dever and Dustin Blan­ton catch­ing one pass each.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Sep 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.