By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
There was only one blemish on Lamar’s record last season: a 42-41 loss in week three against McDonald County.
Twelve months later, with another week three contest against the Mustangs looming, that game was understandably on the Tigers’ minds at practice this week.
“It was brought up quite a bit,” Lamar coach Jared Beshore said. “Obviously we thought last year they got one from us. They outplayed us, outcoached us at the very end. We definitely wanted to get this one back, get it avenged. I thought our guys came out here, we prepared all week, played a tough and physical football game and got it done.”
Lamar, the top-ranked school in Class 2, continued its strong start with a convincing 31-7 victory on Friday night. The Tigers (3-0) rushed for 407 yards on just 32 carries – an average of nearly 13 yards per touch.
“Every week in the Big 8 is typically won by the most physical team and they were more physical than we were tonight,” McDonald County coach Kellen Hoover said. “That’s my biggest takeaway. They were the more physical team. They made more plays than we did and that’s typically a recipe for success and that’s exactly what they did.”
The story of the first half, at least in part, was field position.
The visiting Mustangs (2-1) started at their own 30, 31, 31, 30 and 20 and managed only one score while turning it over on downs twice, punting and throwing an interception.
Lamar, meanwhile, got the ball inside the 50 on its first possession and at the 48 on its next. Those drives resulted in touchdowns by junior Logan Crockett, the first a 17-yard run and the second a 1-yard plunge, as the Tigers opened up an early 12-0 lead.
Even when the Tigers were pinned deep, it didn’t matter. When a McDonald County drive fizzled out at the Lamar 15 early in the second quarter, Crockett ran 85 yards for a touchdown the very next play to make it 19-0 following sophomore Jose Juarez’s extra point.
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Minutes later, after the Mustangs got on the scoreboard with an 8-yard touchdown run by senior quarterback Cole Martin, Lamar got the ball back at its own 29. Senior Trace Willhite sprinted 63 yards on first down and junior Austin Wilkerson scored on an 8-yard run to make it 25-7 in the final minute of the half.
“It’s a thing we preach to our kids, especially offensively. It doesn’t matter where we get the ball, we’re trying to go and punch it in,” Beshore said. “Defensively it’s the same thing where they don’t score until they cross that line so we’re trying to hold that line and we don’t stop until we get the ball back. It was a game of field position but I’m glad our guys overcame the times we didn’t have the advantage.”
Hoover called the first-down runs “big momentum plays.”
“If we get a couple stops on those where they are pinned deep, who knows,” he said. “We’ve got to do a better job finishing drives and we’ve got to execute better in those key situations. You’ve got to be great in the red zone and we just weren’t tonight.”
Finishing drives continued to be a problem for McDonald County in the second half.
After stopping Lamar on downs at the 32 to open the third quarter, the Mustangs got the ball back with 6:15 on the clock and a chance to pull within two scores. Martin ran for three yards on a fourth-and-1 and passed to junior Cross Dowd for 12 yards on a third-and-8. But on a fourth-and-14 at the Lamar 19, Martin’s pass to the end zone fell incomplete. A 24-yard loss on a snap over Martin’s head two plays earlier didn’t help.
That drive ended after 15 plays and took nearly eight minutes off the clock. McDonald County only had one more possession in the second half.
“It was big,” Beshore said. “Obviously we had opportunities to get off the field earlier but our kids kept fighting. The bend-don’t-break mentality came in on that drive and they got the stop when we needed it and gave it back to our offense to kill the clock.”
“Any time you take a lot of time off the clock you want to finish with points,” Hoover said. “You want to finish any drive with points but especially those where you’ve driven down the field. You’ve just got to finish that with points. We weren’t able to do that and the bottom line is they outplayed us, they outcoached us. I’ve got to do a better job getting our guys ready for next week.”
Lamar sophomore Ian Ngugi made it 31-7 with 6:53 left in the third on a 47-yard reverse play. The Mustangs again drove into Tigers territory on their last possession of the game but Martin was sacked twice in three plays by Willhite.
Crockett led Lamar’s offense with three touchdowns out of his 10 carries. He finished the game with 168 yards on the ground. Quarterback Joel Beshore added 11 carries for 50 yards and completed 5-of-6 passing attempts for 65 yards.
The Mustangs finished with 78 rushing yards but lost 31 yards on a pair of negative plays. Martin passed for 159 yards while completing 15-of-22 attempts. He was intercepted once by senior Mason Gastel.
“I’m very happy with how physical we played,” Beshore said. “That’s a good football team over there. They’re big, they’re physical, they’re going to win a lot of football games this year. I was happy with how our kids took the fight to them offensively and defensively. That was my big takeaway.”
