Tigers crush Falcons 38-0 in battle for first place

By JON KLEINKNECHT

Inquirer Sports Editor

sports@galioninquirer.com

MOUNT BLANCHARD — A 38–0 clob­ber­ing of host Riverdale here Fri­day night puts the Galion Tigers all alone in first place of the North Cen­tral Con­fer­ence with three weeks to go.

David Nay rushed for 163 yards and 4 first half touch­downs as the Orange-and-Blue cranked out their sixth con­sec­u­tive vic­tory. In doing so, they are 6–1 over­all and 4–0 in the NCC. Riverdale drops to 4–3 over­all and 3–1 in con­fer­ence play.

Nay had a 55-yard touch­down jaunt seven min­utes into the game. A Con­nor Kempf extra point kick made it 7–0.

Nay added pay­dirt romps of 3, 43 and 5 yards in the sec­ond period, giv­ing the Tigers a com­mand­ing 25–0 half­time lead.

In the third quar­ter, quar­ter­back Austin Prosser and wide receiver Dareian Watkins teamed up for a 41-yard touch­down pass.

With 10:12 left in the game, Anto­nio Bur­ket broke loose for a 25-yard pay­dirt scam­per. Kempf added on a PAT kick for the final point of the night.

“You play foot­ball in Ohio, you gotta be able to play in things like this,” said Galion head coach Chris Hawkins in ref­er­ence to a steady down­pour of rain over the final two-and-a-half quar­ters. “Any time you have weather like this, it can be an equal­izer. I’m happy we won 38–0.”

The shutout was the sec­ond of the sea­son for the Tigers, and the fifth time the defense has held an oppo­nent to 14 points or less. The Fal­cons man­aged just 58 yards in total offense on 47 plays. The Orange-and-Blue lim­ited the host to 29 yards in each half.

“I def­i­nitely think our fronts dom­i­nated on both sides of the ball,” Hawkins said. “Our defense played extremely well. We had three game films on them and they did some things we weren’t expect­ing. Our defense shut them down.”

Offen­sively, the win­ners had 382 yards of their own — 229 on 33 rushes, and 153 pass­ing via Prosser com­plet­ing 6-of-9 passes.

Nay fin­ished with his 163 yards on 17 car­ries. He toted the pigskin just 4 times for minus-1 yard in the sec­ond half. Bur­ket net­ted 56 yards on 4 attempts, Watkins, 18 on 3 car­ries; Josh Keller, zero on 2 runs; and Prosser, minus-8 on 7 tries.

Watkins hauled in 3 passes for 103 yards; Nay, 2 for 42; and Jer­maine Bur­ket, 1 for 8.

The Fal­cons gained only 30 yards rush­ing on 33 car­ries. Quar­ter­back Dil­lon Far­row was 6-for-14 pass­ing for 28 stripes and was picked off once by Prosser.

Josh Bushong led the Fal­cons in rush­ing with 24 yards on 14 attempts. Seth Knoll — who entered the game aver­ag­ing 86 yards rush­ing per con­test and 5.6 yards-per-carry — was lim­ited to 16 stripes on 8 carries.

In their three losses this sea­son, the Fal­cons have been outscored 124–14. They were defeated by Arling­ton 43–14 in their opener, and by Wyn­ford, 43–0, in a non-conference game in the third week.

TIGER BITES: The 163 yards rush­ing by Nay gives him 1,100 on the sea­son. With 2,002 yards a year ago, he becomes only the sec­ond Tiger in school his­tory to have two 1,000-yard sea­sons. Ben Neu­mann did it in 2000 (1,350) and 2001 (1,216). … Nay has 18 touch­downs and 6 extra points this cam­paign for a total of 114 points. He has scored 13 TDs and 6 extra points in the last three games. For his career, the stand­out holds GHS records in rush­ing yards (3,495) and points (352). … Senior nose guard Mikey Hol­lis recorded 2 1/2 sacks, giv­ing him 12 1/2 this season.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Oct 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.