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Saturday,
September 14, 2002
BHS blasts Mattoon on Brown's
big plays
By Jim Benson
Pantagraph staff
BLOOMINGTON -- Andre Brown scrambled for a 20-yard gain in
the second quarter. The scamper drew rave reviews Friday night at Fred
Carlton Field.
"I didn't know Andre could run that far," said one of his
teammates on the sidelines.
Mattoon sure knew about the Bloomington High School senior
quarterback's throwing prowess.
Brown completed 12 of 19 attempts for 211 yards and three touchdowns.
He also ran for 36 yards and another score as the Purple Raiders routed
Mattoon, 52-0, in a Big 12 Conference nondivisional game.
"I have to applaud the line. You have to put them in there.
Without them, this score wouldn't be possible," said Brown.
"They played a heckuva game. I had plenty of time (thanks to) David
Witt, Tyler Noonan, Dan Higby, Andrew Kernes and Brett Sides."
BHS, ranked No. 2 in the Class 6A state poll, improved to 3-0 with its
28th straight regular-season victory.
It didn't appear a runaway was in the making early. Mattoon (1-2) took
the opening kickoff and drove to BHS' 16-yard line, milking more than six
minutes off the clock. When the Raiders' defense held, Mattoon's Shane
Lockart's 33-yard field goal attempt went wide left.
BHS couldn't get a first down with its first possession. But after
that, the Raiders couldn't be stopped. They scored on their next seven
possessions. Fullback Damon Mehlberg's 11-yard touchdown run on the
second quarter's first play started a BHS parade to the end zone.
Brown followed with scoring passes of 49 and 12 yards to Brandon
Hughes. Brown's 6-yard touchdown run with 28 seconds left in the first
half gave BHS a 26-0 lead.
Tight end Dan Cotton, making his first appearance of the season after
a hernia operation, caught a 16-yard scoring pass from Brown early in the
third quarter. Tailback James Wade, held in check by Mattoon the first
half, busted free for a 67-yard touchdown run. Justin Harrison's 15-yard
scoring run gave BHS a 46-0 lead with 2:19 left in the third quarter and
mercifully started a running clock for the rest of the game.
Chad Olson scored the Raiders' last touchdown on a nifty 80-yard punt
return.
"This is the kind of game we needed," said BHS coach Rigo
Schmelzer, whose team held a 407-165 advantage in total yardage. "We
needed to go ahead and feel our offense could put some points on the
board and we could move the ball. We felt in the first two weeks our
timing has been off.
"We remember these (Mattoon) kids almost dominating us in the
second half in week nine last year. We felt this could definitely be a
game. I felt the intensity was very good."
The Raiders posted their second straight shutout. Their first-team
defense hasn't been scored upon in three games.
"We came out kind of flat the first couple plays. After we
realized they weren't going to drop down to the Raiders, we kind of
stepped it up and played how we needed to play," said Harrison, a
200-pound junior linebacker. "We practiced pretty bad this week.
When we came out, we knew we had to get fired up. We had to forget about
what happened this week."
Mattoon coach Gerald Temples faced a two-hour bus trip home to try and
forget what happened.
"We were in there defensively, played well at times and they made
a big play on a pass play, which we knew they had capabilities of
doing," said Temples. "We couldn't recover from that and it
snowballed, offensively and defensively. We got our rear end kicked by a
good football team."
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