Portagers blank Bobcats
Posted by
Dylan Savela, Manistee News
Advocate
September 23, 2011
ONEKAMA — Football may be a game of inches, but Friday night, big plays were the difference.
Onekama just made too many for Brethren to sustain, as the Portagers ran away with a 34-0 homecoming win over the cross-county rival.
“We just missed opportunities,” Bobcats coach Bob VanGorder said. “It’s the old saying, ‘players make plays.’ When it was time to make plays, we had people in position to make plays but we couldn’t convert.
“And I give it up to Onekama, because their players made the big plays when it counted.”
But first, the game was indeed a battle of just inches.
“We had to be patient tonight,” said Onekama coach Jim Hunter, citing the defensive battle that rendered each team’s first pair of drives scoreless. “It was tough. We were being dominated at the line of scrimmage in the first half, so it took awhile.
“It wasn’t like our first 14 points were on nice sustained drives. They were on big plays.”
The first was a 38-yard quarterback keeper by Onekama’s Adrian Norman nearly 11 minutes into the contest that broke the scoreless draw. Running back Quinn Matthews punched in the 2-point conversion to make it 8-0 for Onekama heading into the second quarter.
Onekama’s next trip to the endzone came to fruition on a pair key fourth-down plays.
On 4th-and-7 on Brethren’s 29-yard line, Norman’s pass to Tyler Johnson looked to be intercepted by Brethren’s Lucas Connolly, but was thwarted by a pass interference penalty.
Four plays later, Norman connected with Johnson on a 12-yard fourth-down toss for a touchdown at 3:08.
Norman was 3-for-4 for 11 yards on the night, while rushing for two touchdowns and 71 yards on the ground.
“Adrian called a really good game,” Hunter said of his senior under center. “In fact, a couple checks on the line, he made some really good decisions.
“It shows he’s getting it, it shows he’s a senior. It’s like having another coach on the field.”
The Portagers took the 14-point advantage into halftime, but weren’t satisfied with the two-score edge
“These guys always play us hard,” Hunter said of Brethren’s stingy defense in the first half. “And they played harder than us on the line in that first half.