Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010

Comets get just what they needed

Clayton gets its first season-opening victory since 2004, thanks to a dominating ground attack.

It's been six years since Clayton proved victorious in its regular season opener on the gridiron and it's been over nine months since Wake Forest-Rolesville easily dismissed the Comets from the first round of the state playoffs.

Ever since that loss, Clayton coach Gary Fowler has been pointing to the Comets' opener against Cardinal Gibbons as the most important game of the year.

The Comets looked as though they took coach Fowler's comment to heart as they avenged an opening loss to the Crusaders last season with an impressive 33-13 victory over Cardinal Gibbons on Friday night.

"These kids deserved this tonight--that's their pay for all of this off-season-- was to get that first game," said an exuberant Fowler. "It has been a long time since November and we've worked hard at this.

"We needed this."

The Comets added a new twist to their old-school approach of primarily running the ball and passing only when necessary.

The new wing-T set the Comets showed the Crusaders was nearly unstoppable on a night when the Clayton backs ran roughshod over the Cardinal Gibbons defense. In all, the Comets rushed for 343 yards on 58 carries.

The big guys up front had no problem creating seems for the likes of Montrelle Sanders (21 rushes for 105 yards, 1TD) and junior Chris Pretty (14 attempts for 86 yards). Sophomore Cedric Harris rushed for 67 yards and Gary Richardson contributed 61 more.

"Their offensive line came off the ball, they have good running backs, and they didn't have a turnover," said first-year Cardinal Gibbons head coach Henry Trevathan. "We were overmatched physically and it's just going to take time to take those steps."

The running backs' sure hands and Clayton defensive back Dylan Turner made sure the turnover differential was in favor of the Comets.

Turner picked off two first-half passes to set up Clayton with some good field position. The Clayton ground game did most of the rest of the work in keeping the Crusaders offense and, namely, senior back Tim Buckley, off of the field.

The Comets controlled the ball for 18 minutes and 40 seconds out of the first 24 minutes of the ballgame. Clayton turned in 46 offensive plays in all in the first half, while the Crusaders could only muster 14 snaps of the ball.

As dominant as the Comet rushing game was, it was senior quarterback Matt Reid's three touchdown tosses in the first half that blazed the Comets out to a 26-6 halftime advantage.

Reid connected with Edson Martinez for two of those scores including a strike that Martinez hauled in off of a tipped ball with four seconds to go in the half. Gary Richardson collected the other tally.

Cardinal Gibbons standout running back Tim Buckley put the Crusaders on the board in the second quarter with a nifty 52-yard dash down the sideline to cut the lead to 13-6.

That's the closest the Crusaders got although Buckley once again provided Cardinal Gibbons with some hope on a three-yard touchdown burst on the Crusaders' first possession of the second half.

"Tim's obviously a good player -there's no question about that," added Trevathan about his feature back. "We got a little one-dimensional in the first half. In the second half, we tried to spread the ball around a little more to give him a little breathing room. We got the ball to him on the perimeter."

Buckley ended with 93 hard-fought yards on 17 rushes, including the two scores as well as 43 yards on four receptions out of the backfield.

The Comets grinded out the rest of the game with Sanders icing the contest midway through the fourth quarter on a four-yard score.

The urgency that Fowler encouraged his kids to play with was evident when Fowler decided to go for a fourth-and-1 at the Comets' own 29-yardline on Clayton's first possession of the game.

"I didn't think about it, I just thought, 'Hey, we've got to keep the football; we just can't give it back.' I thought that we needed to establish something right off the bat," Fowler said. "And that's great for the offensive linemen because if you can start making plays like that, then good things start happening."