Power outage doesn’t slow Hubbard’s rushing attack

By Kevin Connelly

kconnelly@vindy.com

Struthers

Not even an 80-minute power outage could stop the Hubbard offense Friday night at Laddie J. Fedor Field.

The Eagles’ dynamic backfield duo of L.J. Scott and George Hill led the rushing attack, as the team ammased 274 rushing yards on Struthers’ top-ranked defense in a 31-7 victory.

Scott did all of his damage in the first three quarters racking up 174 yards before re-tweaking an ankle injury, giving Hill a chance to carry the load in closing time.

“We feel like we’ve got a pretty good offensive attack with our running backs and our offensive line,” Hubbard coach Brian Hoffman said. “With all respect to Struthers, because they do have a great football team and they’re well coached, we feel like we can run the football and we did that pretty successfully tonight.”

The delay came with 4:28 left in the second quarter with Hubbard (5-0) already leading 14-0 behind two Scott touchdown runs. The two banks of lights on the Hubbard side of the field went out and a small fire started on the top of a nearby electrical pole. A blown fuse was offically the cause of the lighting failure, but timing could not have been better for Struthers (4-1), which was on its heels and had no answer for the Eagles’ ground game.

“Obviously, we were a little disappointed at the timing of the stoppage of play, because we felt like we had a lot of momentum going on our side,” Hoffman said. “We were concerned that sitting in the locker room for a half an hour was going to be a problem for us, but the guys did a nice job of keeping their composure.”

The total amount of time play was stopped ended up being one hour and 20 minutes, but that certaintly didn’t stop Hubbard’s offense. On the ensuing drive, Scott broke a number of tackles at the line of scrimmage and broke away down the right sideline for his third score of the game.

With the game nearly out of reach for Struthers, a mental mistake by Hubbard’s speical teams kept the Wildcats in the game. With less than a minute left in the first half, Tyler Taafe got a roughing the punter penalty and gave the Wildcats a second chance. Gary Muntean hit Dalton Moore on a wide receiver screen and Moore allowed his blocking to get in front of him as he darted to the end zone for a 23-yard score.

Struthers’ signs of life didn’t last very long, as Hubbard took the opening drive of the second half and scored on a 1-yard quarterback sneak by Brennan Wassil. The score was set up by a 47 yard run by Scott.

“Hat’s off to them,” Struthers coach Curt Kuntz said. “There’s not a more talented team in the area. They played hard and they played physical.”

The Wildcats tried to establish a running game all night, but to Kuntz, and many of the fans, it always seemed like it was one step forward two steps back for their offense.

“We kind of got behind a little bit and it’s hard to just pound the ball when you get behind,” Kuntz said. “I think we went away from the run a couple times when we should have just stayed with it and established that, but again it goes back to giving them credit.

“That’s a good football team.”