by Malcolm Butler
Here are some news and notes from last night’s 48-6 win over Pineville.
Brantley’s Absence: Starting quarterback Josh Brantley played only one snap the entire game after head coach Jerrod Baugh suspended the junior signal caller. Brantley threw a 15-yard TD pass to Jordan Parker on the first offensive snap of the second half for the Bearcats after recovering a muffed kickoff on the Rebels 15-yard line.
“It was some internal disciplinary stuff, and I think we got that corrected,” said Baugh. “I don’t expect for it to be an issue moving forward. I wanted to get him in at some point of the game. If we got into a 2-minute situation before the half I was going to try to put him in that situation, especially being out of the ball game and getting mentally prepared. That didn’t happen. I did want him to go through halftime and come back out and I thought he did a good job with that. Lesson learned I hope. As far as I’m concerned its over with.”
Mayfield, Brooks Miss Due to Health: Junior running back Dylone Brooks and senior linebacker Jadon Mayfield were both held out of the game due to health issues, according to Baugh. Brooks has a broken collarbone while Mayfield had a staph infection.
“Dylone fell wrong in practice on Tuesday,” said Baugh. “Collarbone is broken. If it was going to be broken it was the best-case scenario. Three weeks. Normally its like a six-to-eight week deal. So that part was encouraging. Mayfield has a staph infection and he is struggling walking around. He really woke up sore. He text me about 5:30 this morning and was really sore. It’s not a situation where those guys were held out because of who we were playing. They would have had to be out if we were playing LSU.”
Onside Kick Craziness: Teams are utilizing on-side kicks at various points of games (not just late in the fourth quarter) more and more on the high school level. Last week ASH recovered back-to-back onside kicks in the third quarter as the Trojans scored 21 points before the Bearcats ever recorded an offensive snap. Against Pineville last night, the Rebels opened the game by recovering an onside kick against the Bearcats. Ruston turned the tables and utilized the onside kick and a short pooch kick to record a number of turnovers on the kickoff as well.
“Yeah, we got to do a better job (of defending the onside kick),” said Baugh. “I told the guys after last week, they know I am on our kickoff. If I see something and it looks like somebody isn’t handling something, then you are fixing to get it. Yeah, we are going to have to get that corrected. That’s three in two weeks and that’s not going to get it on our end.”
Freshman QB Impressive: Freshman Sam Hartwell got the start due to Josh Brantley’s suspension and made the most of his opportunity. The 14-year-old completed 6-of-11 passes for 110 yards and two TDs and had two more passes dropped. He threw an 18-yard strike to Logan Malone on a skinny post in the second quarter and also a 6-yard score on a fade route to Ahmad Hudson in the first quarter.
“I thought he settled in and did well,” said Baugh. “I knew he was going to be nervous, and there were going to be some growing pains with him. You always feel like you got your back-up quarterback, and you want to find opportunities to get them in. You don’t want it to be forced obviously. You want to find some times to get him in so he can get comfortable in a game-time situation. Really for it to be unexpected, I think he handled that situation really well. I think that will give him some confidence.”
Covering Final Kickoff: With Ruston leading 48-0 with 15 seconds remaining in the game, the Bearcats surrendered a 75-yard kickoff return for a TD on the final play of the game preventing the shutout.
“I don’t think Coach (Kyle) Williams was real happy with that. It was probably a little bit on me. There are spots on our kickoff team where we use a bunch of starters, and we put them in a rotation. I wanted to get all of them out. So we did wholesale substitutions and put some other guys in there. Some of them were just out of position. I will put that on me. I need to do a better job of putting guys in the right spot in case of that comes up. That’s probably an afterthought in that situation, but it is something we do need to get corrected.”
