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By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
With less than a minute left in the game, the Lamar sideline was animated as the team’s second-string defense tried to preserve a shutout.
After three-straight incompletions, host Mt. Vernon faced a fourth-and-10 from the Lamar 37-yard line. Senior quarterback Mason Ballay, who’d been under pressure all night, scrambled to his right and tried to reach the first down marker. Waiting for him was Lamar sophomore cornerback Tyler Ansley, who made a textbook open field tackle two yards short of the marker.
Thirty-seven seconds later, the Tigers were celebrating their first shutout of the season and a dominant 33-0 victory against the Mountaineers.
“This is the best game we’ve played defensively all year,” Lamar coach Jared Beshore said. “We kind of had some early struggles but now we’re starting to catch our rhythm. Hat’s off to our whole defensive staff, those guys showed up to play tonight.”
The Tigers entered Friday night allowing an average of 25 points per game. And the Mountaineers’ offense averaged 28. But in a battle of 4-1 teams, it was the Lamar defense that stole the show.
The Tigers limited Ballay to 12-of-29 passing and held Mt. Vernon to just 164 yards. Of the Mountaineers’ 20 running plays, five of them went for negative yards, and 11 for a yard or less.
In the first half, Mt. Vernon fumbled on its first possession, threw an interception on another and also punted three times. Lamar senior Case Tucker recovered the fumble and sophomore Joel Beshore picked off a pass in the end zone.
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Lamar, which started slowly offensively, scored with 4:10 left in the first quarter when Beshore scored on a 48-yard catch-and-run down the Tigers’ sideline.
Mt. Vernon followed with a punt, which gave the Tigers possession at the Mountaineer 41. Six plays later sophomore Logan Crockett scored from the 2 and Beshore added the two-point conversion to make it 14-0 with 11:56 left in the half.
The Mountaineers threatened for the first time on their ensuing possession, moving from the 28 to the Lamar 27. But on third-and-5 Beshore came up with the end zone interception.
After another punt, Lamar marched 70 yards in the final 1:52 of the half and scored on a Tucker run with 1.8 seconds on the clock to lead 21-0 at the half.
“I’m really disappointed in the last touchdown of the first half, that we gave that one up,” Mt. Vernon coach Tom Cox said. “I just felt like that really put us in a big hole. When you’re down 14-0 that’s one thing, when you come out 21-0 …”
The Mountaineers looked to have righted the ship to start the third quarter, earning two first downs and advancing to the Lamar 34. A pass briefly got them to the 26 before it was called back because of holding, and Mt. Vernon ended up punting from near midfield.
Crockett added a 3-yard touchdown run with 10:38 left in the game to make it 27-0, then Beshore intercepted another pass on Mt. Vernon’s next snap. That led to a 4-yard score by senior Cade Griffith.
Beshore added his third pick of the game with five-and-a-half minutes remaining.
“It’s awesome to get to coach him, especially awesome when he’s making plays,” said Jared, his older brother. “That makes it even more fun. He’s a great kid, he’s a great athlete. I know he’s going to do some great things for us if he stays focused.”
“I think Lamar was the reason for the offensive struggles,” Cox said. “We just were not able to get anything consistent going. I think they did a good job of taking away some of the things that we’ve been able to do well when we had Rafe (Darter) and we could stretch the field a little bit more with him. We were still trying to do that with our other guys and they’re doing a good job on that but we had so much pressure that Mason just didn’t have enough time to really put the ball on anybody.
“I thought Lamar was just a lot bigger than us, they had some great speed and just had a good game plan against us as well,” Cox said.
Darter, the team’s leading receiver, had knee surgery Friday and will miss the rest of the season.
Tucker completed 6-of-10 passes for Lamar for 88 yards and added 112 yards on 22 carries.
The Tigers rushed 52 times for 333 yards.
It wasn’t a perfect night offensively, however. Lamar was penalized several times on offense and finished the game with 11 penalties amounting to 95 yards.
“I didn’t think we played very clean and that’s just me being honest,” Beshore said. “From the expectation of our guys, what we usually do, I didn’t think it was very clean. Now, we still put up 33 points. I’ll take that over not as many and an ugly loss. We’ve got to find those things to improve on and do that next week.”
Lamar improved to 5-1 with the win and extended its winning streak against Mt. Vernon to nine games dating back to 2009. Mt. Vernon dropped to 4-2.
