Crusaders outrun Wildcats behind Roberson’s four TDs

LEE – Last year’s Wildcat Super Bowl finalist team seems like a distant memory to this year’s squad, as Lee dropped their third consecutive home game, this one to St. Joe’s (4-1) last Friday. The Crusaders out ran the Wildcats, 48-14, behind Tank Roberson’s 224 rushing yards and four touchdowns.

“[Roberson] has speed, and you can’t teach speed,” said Lee Head Coach Keith Thomson. “He just really got off on us here.”

Roberson and the Crusaders took the third play from scrimmage and ran 62 yards down the right sideline for the team’s first score, and St. Joe’s never looked back before building a 26-0 lead at halftime.

In the first quarter, Lee did utilize a well-orchestrated screen pass to Ryan Hurley that had the ‘Cats deep in Crusaders territory on their opening drive, but Lee squandered their best opportunity to stay in the game with a fumble.

“Turnovers are a killer,” Thomson said. “There is only one stat that matters besides the score and that’s turnovers – yards don’t matter when you are down there at the 10-yard line with a chance to even it up and we put the ball on the ground.”

The pivotal play of the game was when Roberson took a hand-off from mid-field as the first half clock expired and ran 52-yards for a touchdown, avoiding a few tackle opportunities for the Wildcats, which had Thomson frustrated with his team afterwards.

“I certainly wasn’t happy with how we played,” Thomson said. “We had lineman issues and we had tackling issues – all night long.”

To make matters worse for Lee, they came out flat after halftime as Roberson took the opening second-half kickoff and went 80-yards for his fourth touchdown of the night, to put the game away at 34-0.

“Take nothing away from him,” Thomson said. “He came out and played a whale of a game, and he took it over.”

For Lee, a team that has seen the return of center Preston Webb, who appeared to be still slightly hampered with a heel injury throughout the game, the hope is to return lineman Vinny Onorato, who has also been hampered with a leg injury.

With a young, inexperienced and mainly injured offensive line, Thomson has been using quarterback Deaglan Giarolo and Hurley to set up an effective misdirection screen pass attack in order to keep the opposing team honest.

“We have a young and inexperienced offensive line, and one of things we have been trying to do is use the screen pass and take the heat off a little bit and use their aggressiveness against them,” Thomson said.

The one bright spot on this struggling offense for Lee has been Hurley, who has been taken on a huge offensive load for Thomson’s squad this year, and his coach couldn’t be more pleased with his effort.

“I wish I had 11 of [Hurley],” Thomson said. “Ryan plays the game the way it’s meant to be played. The best compliment I could give a football player is that you would never know the score by the way he plays, up-40 or down-40, nothing changes with his game.”

After four straight home games, the Wildcats wrap up the remainder of the season on the road. This Friday, the Cats travel to Wahconah to take on another explosive offense.

“Another challenge for us,” Thomson said. “We knew with a bunch of tough games at home it was going to be difficult, and Wahconah is one of those games that we are very happy to get out of here and get on the road – a lot of distractions at home – as the road will toughen us up with an us-against-the-world mentality.”

Posted by Tim Davis on October 18, 2012. Filed under High School Sports,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry