Tiger Cubs fall to Mustangs

ELLETTSVILLE -- Offense.

Three weeks into this high school football season Greencastle head coach Mike Meyer is still looking for his offense to come alive.

And after Friday night's 14-0 loss to Edgewood, he is still looking for it. In three games, the Tiger Cubs have only found the end zone twice. Being shut out of their first game of the season and this weeks contest.

"We need to establish some consistency on offense," said Meyer after Friday night's loss. "We need to control the mistakes on the offensive side of the ball."

Things aren't looking any better for next week either, with 7:11 to go in the third quarter the Tiger Cub's senior leader on offense Patrick Richardson went down with a leg injury. Richardson spent the rest of the game in considerable pain on the Greencastle bench.

After the game, Meyer said that he didn't know how quick Richardson would be able to bounce back from the injury. On the night, Richardson had 82 yards on 11 carries. The Tiger Cubs had a total of 194 yards rushing on the night and 67 passing yards from senior quarterback Jordan Hickam.

There were bright spots for the Tiger Cubs in Friday night's game though. On the first play of the game, Richardson took the handoff from Hickam, 61 yards to the Edgewood 21 yard line. Two plays later he fumbled the ball on the 11-yard line giving the ball to the Mustangs.

Six plays later the defense forced the Mustangs to punt the ball, but Greencastle ended up going three and out to punt the ball back to Edgewood. The Mustangs went on to score three plays later on a 67 yard run by Bryan Delos Santos.

Junior Jesse Vermillion block the extra point attempt making the score 6-0.

"Our defense played extremely well tonight," said Meyer. "We just couldn't get anything going on offense."Jesse Ford and Jesse Vermillion had excellent games tonight on defense."

After halftime, the Tiger Cubs again came out and showed a little spark when sophomore Ryan Pettit recovered a Mustang fumble on the 35-yard line. Again though the offense couldn't find the end zone as they were stopped on the 27-yard line giving the ball over on downs to the Mustangs.

The Mustangs found the end zone on a 46-yard reverse pass from senior Kyle Williams to sophomore James Ridge. Delos Santos scored on the two point conversion giving the Mustangs their final points of the game at 14-0.

The Mustangs controlled the clock the majority of the fourth quarter taking possession of the ball with 11:54 remaining in the quarter. The Tiger Cubs defense finally stopped the Mustangs with 1:43 remaining in the game.

During the fourth quarter Greencastle's, Nataniel Velasquez did intercept a pass from Edgewood quarterback Tyler Cross, returning the ball some 20-yards before fumbling around the 20 yard line.

"They did a real good job of controlling the second half of the game," said Meyer. "We had our opportunities but we didn't take advantage of them."

The Tiger Cubs will look to get a win next week as they take on Triton Central.

At Edgewood

Edgewood 0 6 8 0 -- 14

Greencastle 0 0 0 0 -- 0

Individual Stats

Rushing

Greencastle -- (Richardson 11-82; Ford 3-9; Hickam 10-10; Remsburg 3-41; Velasquez 1-20)

Edgewood -- (Williams 18-114; Cross 11-53; Delos Santos 9-109, 1 TD; Ridge 1-46; Fisher 1-11)

Passing

Greencastle -- Hickam 12-7-0-2 79 yards.

Edgewood -- Cross 11-6-0-2 28 yards , Williams 1-1-1-0 46 yards