Griffin High’s Quay Mangham (80) runs for yards after the catch on Friday at Dutchtown in Hampton as the Bulldogs’ Jesse Christensen (18) gives chase. Mangham, a sophomore, had four receptions for a game-high 117 yards, including a 40-yard touchdown reception in the Bears’ 42-16 season-opening win.
Both games left fans with plenty to talk about heading into games this week where Griffin will travel to take on Northgate on Friday and Spalding will host Rutland
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LOPSIDED WIN
It was Griffin’s most lopsided win in its five-game series with Dutchtown, easily eclipsing a 28-7, 21-point win the Bears posted in 2009 over the Bulldogs
The win gives Griffin a 5-0 lead in the all-time series with Dutchtown.
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SOPHOMORE POWER
The amazing thing about Friday night’s win is all five Griffin touchdowns were scored by sophomores.
There was a 10-yard TD run by Malik Miller, the game’s leading rusher with 80 yards on eight carries, in the first half. Then came touchdown receptions of 40 yards by Quay Mangham and 28-yards by Christian Owen before Miller ripped off two more touchdowns runs, the first of 37 yards and the second of 6 yards.
Backup quarterback Anforne Stroud THEN scored on a 5-yard TD run on fourth-and-goal in the game’s waning moments.
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TALE OF TWO HALVES
While Griffin struggled on defense in the first half, allowing 16 points and 222 yards of offense (48 on 21 rushes and 174 on 7-of-10 passing), it was a different story in the second half.
The Bears not only kept the Bulldogs off the scoreboard in the second half, they also limited them to 86 yards of offense (33 on nine rushes and 53 passing on 5-of-9 passing.
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PUMP UP THE VOLUME
Griffin’s offense had a coming out party Friday, amassing 479 total yards from scrimmage.
For the record, 197 yards of it came on 12-of-28 passing and 282 yards of it came on 39 rushes.
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STILL TIED
The all-time series between Spalding and Lamar County was tied at 2-all going into Friday’s game.
Now, a game later, it’s still tied 2-2-1.
For the record, it’s the second year in a row Spalding played to a tie through regulation in its season opener — both happening since the arrival of head coach Nick Davis, in his second year leading the Jags.
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YARDSTICK
Spalding High was outgained 273-144 in yards Friday against Lamar County.
“I was very excited about how hard we played,” said second-year Jags head coach Nick Davis.
Most of Spalding’s problems on defense came when Lamar went with a no-back formation.
“I knw as a fact we hurt ourselves,” said Davis, who also serves as the Jags defensive coordinator. “They went in an empty set, no-back formation about four times and we lined up wrong three out of four times — which yielded very long runs and almost cost us the game.”
Davis said he will brush that up in practice this week.
“We did a great job of gang tackling, but we’ve got to do a better job of tackling late in te game — that’s where a lot of missed tackles came and allowed them to get sustain drives and get first downs.”
The result is Lamar County was able to kick a 22-yard field goal with no time left on the clock to tie the game.
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ON OFFENSE
Davis felt Spalding’s offense was also close to working well.
“We played well offensively,” he said. “We just had some miscues, just some missed blocks and blocking the person or not making the right cut off a block — things we can brush up on.”
He also felt a penalty deep in the Lamar zone also hurt.
“You can’t shoot yourself in the foot like that when you have a chance to put the game away,” he added.
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