Golden Eagles throttle ’Jackets on BW’s Homecoming with 27-14 win victory

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

Chalk this one up to the Golden Eagle defense …

Big Wal­nut cel­e­brated its 2012 Fall Home­com­ing by hand­ing Mount Ver­non its first Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion set­back with a 27–14 vic­tory over the vis­it­ing Yel­low Jack­ets Fri­day night at Golden Eagle Stadium.

“This was a com­plete team vic­tory,” a smil­ing Joe Weaver said in his office fol­low­ing the game. “From our defense, which helped give us an early 21–0 lead, to our offense, which made few mis­takes, we came through with one of our best per­for­mances of the sea­son against a very good Mount Ver­non team.”

Fol­low­ing a score­less first quar­ter, a quar­ter that saw Mount Ver­non (5–2, 3–1 OCC) con­trol the ball for the first 9:06 on a 17-play, 58-yard series before mis­fir­ing on a 25-yard field goal attempt, Big Wal­nut (5–2, 3–1) got on the score­board thanks to senior defen­sive back Adam Shaheen’s 48-yard inter­cep­tion return at the 8:56 mark of the sec­ond quar­ter for a 7–0 lead.

The Golden Eagles made it 14–0 late in the open­ing half, tak­ing a Mount Ver­non punt at the Yel­low Jacket 44 and find­ing the end zone 9 plays later on senior quar­ter­back Car­son Chatterton’s 8-yard touch­down run with 2:03 show­ing on the clock. Chat­ter­ton keyed the drive with pass com­ple­tions of 13 and 11 yards to senior tight end Brant Weiss and senior back Alex Clark.

Big Wal­nut took the sec­ond half kick­off and marched 80 yards in 7 plays with senior back Cody Con­ley pow­er­ing across the dou­ble stripe from 14 yards out on a third-and-4 call three min­utes into the third quar­ter. Chatterton’s 47-yard com­ple­tion to sopho­more back Chris­t­ian John­son gave the Golden Eagles a first-and-10 at the Yel­low Jacket 20.

Com­ing off a 2–8-0 sea­son, Mount Ver­non, after being held on downs at the Big Wal­nut 23, got the ball right back as senior Gor­don Crab­tree picked off a Chat­ter­ton pass and returned it to the Golden Eagle 26. Two plays later, Briggs found junior Rain Wig­gand on a 22-yard scor­ing pass and the Yel­low Jack­ets were on the board, trail­ing 21–7 with 3:10 left in the quarter.

Big Wal­nut was forced to punt on the ensu­ing pos­ses­sion, set­ting the Yel­low Jack­ets up with a first-and-10 on their own 29. Seven snaps later, with the help of a Briggs 53-yard com­ple­tion to junior Logan Rhea, Mount Ver­non was back in the end zone on J.D. Orr’s 2-yard run with 10:38 left in the game and the Yel­low Jack­ets in strik­ing dis­tance at 21–14.

Fol­low­ing the kick­off, the Golden Eagles put together an 8-play series that ended with a punt that gave the Yel­low Jack­ets pos­ses­sion at their own 28 with the clock tick­ing under 6 min­utes. On Mount Vernon’s sec­ond play, BW senior defen­sive back Seth Myers inter­cepted a Briggs pass at the Yel­low Jacket 35 and returned it to the 14. Three plays later, Chat­ter­ton and Sha­heen hooked up on a 10-yard pass play to put Big Wal­nut up 27–14 with 4:37 to play.

“This was a big win for us against a phys­i­cal Mount Ver­non team and we were equal to the chal­lenge,” Weaver said. “Our defense was aggres­sive and con­tin­ued to make adjust­ments to off­set what Mount Ver­non was try­ing to accom­plish with the foot­ball … and it was successful.”

Big Walnut’s offense, led by Chatterton’s pass­ing (9-for-14 for 121 yards) and Johnson’s rush­ing (74 yards in 17 car­ries), fin­ished with 12 first downs and 231 yards in 45 plays. Sha­heen had 3 catches for 39 yards and John­son 2 for 45 yards.

“Our offense, which com­mit­ted only 1 turnover, was effec­tive, espe­cially early on when we built the 21–0 lead,” Weaver said. “We had con­tri­bu­tions from every­one, from our backs to our line, who had a hand in mak­ing our offense click .”

Mount Ver­non totaled 15 first downs and 268 yards in total offense. Briggs was 12-for-29 pass­ing for 130 yards. Sopho­more Lucas Staten had 5 recep­tions for 33 yards and Rhea 4 for 76 yards. On the ground, Orr ran for 80 yards in 24 carries.

With the win, Big Wal­nut pulled into a second-place tie with Olen­tangy (6–1, 3–1 OCC) and Mount Ver­non behind New Albany (5–2, 4–0 OCC) in the Cap­i­tal Divi­sion standings.

Next up for the Golden Eagles? Division-leading New Albany next Fri­day at 7:30 p.m. in New Albany.

“I’m con­fi­dent we will be ready to com­pete,” Weaver said. “My group con­tin­ues to improve game-by-game and I hon­esty believe that our best foot­ball still lies ahead of us. We con­trol our own des­tiny and with three games remain­ing on our regular-season sched­ule, we are in a posi­tion to make cer­tain things happen.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.