The Hilltoppers scored early and often against Willoughby South to earn a 56-20 Western Reserve Conference victory.
Game photos click here.
The Hilltoppers scored early and often against Willoughby South to earn a 56-20 Western Reserve Conference victory.
For the second consecutive game, Chardon (7-1, 4-1 WRC) jumped out to a huge first quarter lead, had a running clock situation in the second half, and put more than 55 points on the board.
Throughout the night, junior running back AJ Bruce and senior quarterback Alex Henry ran at will against a susceptible Rebels defense.
On just six carries, Bruce ran for 147 yards and three touchdowns. He also caught one pass for 43 yards and scored a two-point conversion.
“AJ is a dude,” said Chardon Head Coach Mitch Hewitt. “Night in and night out, he’s arguably the best player on the football field. He makes the most of his touches.”
“It was our best offensive game all-around,” Bruce said. “The blocks were amazing.”
Henry tallied 121 yards on the ground and picked up a rushing touchdown. He also threw for 106 yards, including one touchdown.
Overall, the Toppers piled up 456 yards of total offense – 350 rushing and 106 passing. They also gained 21 first downs and fumbled twice.
Senior fullback Zach Fay, who has also been getting some reps on defense, felt this game was important because it was a way to gauge if Chardon’s offense has improved. Likewise, he believes the offensive line has made significant strides, proven by this 56-point outburst against the Rebels.
“These last two weeks, we haven’t had practices like that,” he said. “We’re all getting locked in because we realize we’re almost at that part of the season where it’s win or go home.”
The offensive onslaught started early as, just over two minutes into the game, Bruce took a jet sweep to the right side and raced 38-yards to the endzone for the game’s first score.
About two minutes later, Henry connected with sophomore running back Caleb Hewitt for a 20-yard touchdown reception to go up 14-0.
The Rebels started to get it together on offense and moved the ball down to the Chardon 30 on their ensuing drive. However, a botched option from play from senior quarterback Colin Quinlan and senior running back Tyrone Singleton resulted in senior linebacker Heath Fetchik recovering the lateral on the Chardon 32.
Less than three minutes later, senior Fay punched it in from three yards out to up the lead to 21-0; the score was setup by a 43-yard pass from Henry to Bruce down the left sideline.
“It was a great way to set the tone,” Fay said about Chardon’s quick start. “We needed to get our intensity back up.”
South finally broke into the scoring column with a 4-yard touchdown reception from Quinlan to senior receiver Bryce Figler, which cut the score down to 21-7.
Throughout the night, Quinlan was successful in hitting his receivers with quick slant routes.
“They beat us up a little bit with slants, but the inside zone was disappointing, that we were giving that up,” said Hewitt. “We need to get better. We’re not there yet ,and we don’t need to be there yet. We need to keep getting better every week.”
“We were in a lot of man coverage and needed to talk more,” Bruce said. “We’ll fix it in films.”
Chardon, though, responded with 14 unanswered points to close out the quarter. Junior running back Drago Vujaklija and Henry each had a 7-yard touchdown run to send the Toppers into the locker room at halftime up 35-7.
“Our coach stressed to us how we played some decent teams prior to this game, and South is a really solid team, and we showed we could put it up,” said Bruce.
In the third quarter, Bruce scored two more touchdowns, on runs of 16 and 48 yards. Following the 48-yard score, the Toppers went for the two-point conversion and Bruce found an opening on the right side to put the Toppers up 50-20 with 3:44 to go in the third, starting the running clock.
In most other circumstances, Hewitt would not have gone for two at that stage in the game. However, the Hilltoppers are in the midst of preparing for what they hope is a long playoff run.
“We were trying to get a running clock and trying to save our guys,” Hewitt said. “We weren’t trying to run the score up, but trying to run the clock to get some guys rested.”
Sophomore quarterback Chad Prince scored a touchdown midway through the fourth to make it 56-20.
South was limited to 264 yards of total offense, 119 on the ground and 145 through the air. The Rebels were also held to just 12 first downs.
Despite their gaudy offensive numbers, the Hilltoppers know what still needs improvement with just one week left in the regular season before playoffs begin.
“It gives us something to work on walking out of here,” said Hewitt. “We can’t give up long runs…our goal is to stop the run. If people want to score on us, they need to do it through the air. We have to get better upfront, and we will, because I believe our kids our invested in the process.
“We can’t have penalties and turn the ball over and beat really good teams.”
According to joeeitel.com, the Hilltoppers wrapped up a top-four spot in Division III, Region 9. They will likely clinch the one or two seed by defeating North this Friday.
