MOUNT GILEAD — If Mount Gilead’s football stadium was the Louvre, then its second series of the second half was the Mona Lisa.
MG put together a masterpiece to essentially end the game, going on to a 39-7 Week 6 home Knox Morrow Athletic Conference victory over East Knox Sept. 26.
“That’s exactly what we want to do, 100 percent,” Mount Gilead coach Mike Reid said, later adding, “That was a 14-play, 8-minute deal. We celebrate 4 yards. It’s not real sexy like a lot of offenses, but we won 39-7.”
What did MG do in that series?
Only leading 16-7 with 8:15 to go in the third quarter, MG took over at its own 27. The team ran 14 plays — with an emphasis on run as they threw just three times all night — rolling up four first downs and eating all of the clock.
On the first place of the fourth quarter, Carson Barnum finished it with a 1-yard run up the middle for a touchdown and Brogan Pfleiderer added the 2-point conversion to go up 24-7.
“We communicate every single play. They stop us for less than 3 (yards) and we consider it a loss in our heads, but we’ll move on to the next play,” Barnum said. “If we get 3 this time, we’ll go celebrate. It’s winning the individual matches, the 1-on-1, every single play.”
Mount Gilead simply wore out the Bulldogs. It rushed for 264 yards and accounted for 314 yards of offense, amassing 18 first downs. They controled the clock, posssessin gthe ball for more than 30 of the 48 minutes.
“That’s definitely one thing we want to do — just ground and pound and keep it away,” Barnum said. “Our defense plays phenomenal when we do it. We work together and work beautifully. Holding the ball is the good part, and it’s so demoralizing out there — 4 yards, 4 yards, 4 yards. It wears them down.”
Barnum led Mount Gilead (6-0, 3-0) with 181 yards and three touchdowns on 35 carries. Pfleiderer backed him with 45 yards on seven carries. Cole Fricke ran in a 9-yard keeper, plus completed a 50-yard touchdown pass to Wyatt Long to put his team up 8-7 early in the second quarter.
The defense did its damage, too
Jax Lester of East Knox (1-5, 1-2) came into the game as the KMAC’s top passer, completing 60 percent of his attempts for more than 1,100 yards and 14 touchdowns, but Mount Gilead made it rough on him after the first series.
He engineered a 6-play, 53-yard drive, hitting Mason Savage for a 13-yard touchdown to start the game. However, the Bulldogs managed just 63 yards of offense the rest of the night. MG also held them to only 12 rushing yards, and Lester was just 10 of 25 passing for 104 yards.
“We had a couple uncharacteristic mistakes and had a couple of bad coverages in that first defensive drive, so we started kind of slow,” Reid said. “Our defense responded after that. Lester is a tremendous quarterback, and he has a great receiving corps.”
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This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Mount Gilead’s offense controls another KMAC football opponent
