With his squad leading just 21-14 at halftime over Topeka West, Emporia High coach Bill Lowe decided his team needed a fire lit under it in the locker room.
“We got our butts chewed out at halftime because we were playing terrible,” sophomore quarterback Taylor Euler said. “We had a lot of mistakes. People just weren’t blocking. I wasn’t reading my reads right. We just weren’t getting it done, and Coach chewed on us.”
The Spartans got Lowe’s message and then some, as Emporia High completely dominated in the second half en route to a 35-14 victory over the Chargers. Emporia High held Topeka West to just 34 total yards in the second half, including a grand total of three yards rushing, and forced three turnovers after halftime to wipe out any shot of a Charger comeback.
“We were just playing with intensity and a lot of emotion,” senior defensive end Miles Ringgold said. “We were playing really hard. We feel like we can stop anything.”
The play of the defense in the second half was downright stingy, as the Spartans (3-1) never let Topeka West (0-4) get a chance to close the lead, only allowing the Chargers to cross midfield once after halftime.
“We didn’t change any schemes, we didn’t do anything different, we just had to click it up one notch,” defensive coordinator P.J. Marstall said. “We challenged them. I think they responded and did well.”
Not to be outdone, the Emporia High offense, led by junior running back Edd Noonan’s 161 rushing yards and two touchdowns, made good on three of the five turnovers the EHS defense forced on the night by scoring touchdowns.
“Our defense got turnovers, which gave us good field position,” Noonan said. “We just had to keep driving the ball and use up a lot of time. We capitalized on some of the turnovers we got and we got the points we needed to win the game.”
The Spartans’ defense set the tone early when Ringgold jumped on a fumble by Topeka West running back Havier Robinson on the second play from scrimmage to give EHS the ball at the West 21-yard line.
Five plays later, Euler hit wide receiver Billy Malone across the middle for a six-yard touchdown to make it 7-0.
Topeka West quickly erased the Spartan lead, however, as Demetrius Brown took the ensuing kickoff 91 yards almost untouched to tie the game at 7.
After an EHS drive stalled, linebacker Dillon Cox continued his amazing play of late when he got in the scoring act late in the first quarter.
Facing a third-and-15, Topeka West quarterback Andy Mariani threw a pass down the middle of the field and straight into Cox’s arms. Cox angled toward the right sideline, broke at least five tackles in front of the Spartans’ bench and rumbled into the end zone for a 55-yard interception return for a touchdown.
“I caught the ball and just wanted to get as many yards as I could,” Cox said. “I thought I was going to get tackled. I just kept dodging tacklers, and the next thing I know, I had open field in front of me. I just gave it everything I had.”
Defensive touchdowns have been so rare for the Spartans over the past few years that none of the EHS coaches could remember the last time the Spartans scored a defensive touchdown.
“He was stumbling and bumbling, and I didn’t know if we was going to make it to the end zone,” Lowe said. “I was like ‘just get in there.’ It was awesome. That was a huge play.”
Two minutes into the second quarter, the Spartans got another big play, this time from the offense.
After a Charger punt, Noonan took a handoff from Euler and ran to his right, where a gaping hole had formed in the right side of the offensive line.
Noonan shot through the hole and past the Charger secondary nearly untouched — “I think somebody said they got a hand or an arm on me, but that was about it,” Noonan said — and 76 yards later scored the touchdown to put EHS up, 21-7.
“(Topeka West) was in a defense that didn’t make any sense at all. They had no defensive linemen on that side,” Euler said. “It was just an easy read. There was a huge hole. David Hrabik had a huge block. It was one of the best blocks I’ve ever seen, and it sprung Edd for 76 yards.”
Topeka West made it 21-14 with 1:15 left in the first half on a 19-yard touchdown pass from Mariani to Jim Landis on a drive kept alive by a pass interference call on the Spartans’ Seth Torres that negated a Robert Keisler interception.
Although the Spartans found ways to score in the first half, the coaches and players were upset at the number of opportunities EHS let slip away. Emporia High had six penalties for 49 yards in the first half, which stalled several Spartan drives while aiding in the Chargers’ lone offensive touchdown of the half.
“We didn’t feel like we capitalized enough,” Lowe said. “I challenged them at halftime because I thought we were making excuses and feeling sorry for ourselves. I told them that there were two ways we could go — they could keep making excuses and get beat or they could man-up and start making plays.”
After the half, the Spartans rolled up 139 more yards of offense to go along with the 147 yards they gained in the first half, giving EHS 286 total yards for the game.
Emporia High had two early drives stall out — one on a failed fourth-down conversion and one on a Euler interception, his first of the year — before the Spartans began to click.
After Keisler intercepted a Mariani pass and returned it to the Topeka West 30-yard line, EHS ran 10 consecutive running plays and capped the drive with a two-yard quarterback sneak by Euler to make the score 28-14 with 6:10 remaining in the game.
On the next Topeka West drive, Blake Berry fumbled a pass at the Charger 29-yard line, which James Sparks recovered for EHS.
Noonan scored his second touchdown of the night five plays later on a four-yard run around the right side to make it 35-14.
As the coup de grâce, Corey Bacon intercepted Mariani’s final pass attempt of the night with less than two minutes remaining, and Emporia High ran out the clock from there.
After the game, Lowe had some words of encouragement for his team, which has won three of its four games by an average of 28-7.
“I told them I was proud of them with the way they responded after halftime,” Lowe said. “They’re playing with a lot of confidence and a lot of desire to get the job done. Right now, we should start believing in ourselves.”