STILWELL — While Blue Valley West senior Aaron Ashley didn’t single-handedly beat Emporia High Thursday night, it sure seemed like a one-man show at times.
Ashley had a hand in three huge scoring plays for the Jaguars, who downed the Spartans 28-10 Thursday night at Blue Valley District Stadium in the season opener for both teams.
The 6-foot, 205-pound wide receiver and defensive back scored touchdowns on a fumble recovery, a long reception and an interception return, producing enough offense by himself to keep the out-gunned Spartans at bay.
“If you take away those big plays, it’s a totally different game,” Emporia High senior defensive back Corey Bacon said. “If we’d have just done the little things right to help us on the big things, it’s a totally different ballgame.
“But obviously, it wasn’t good enough.”
Meanwhile, the Emporia High offense couldn’t take advantage of West miscues at several critical times, while at other times looked simply overwhelmed by the Jaguars’ speed. Led by a tremendous push from its front seven, the West defense stifled the Spartan offense, allowing EHS to gain a mere 172 yards of offense — 80 yards of which came on Emporia’s lone touchdown drive late in the game.
“We played a really good team, I just thought we would handle it a little better than what we did,” EHS coach Bill Lowe said. “We were really poor up front offensively. We’ve got to take care of that. That’s probably the most frustrated I’ve ever been as a coach. We had no chance to run anything.”
But the real story was West’s penchant for the big play, and the Jaguars simply had too many of them for EHS (0-1) to overcome.
West (1-0) got the first of its backbreaking scores on its opening drive after forcing EHS to punt on its first possession.
With a first-and-10 near midfield, West quarterback Mike Besler took off running around the left side, and as he was being tackled for what would have been a small gain, he lost the ball, which went shooting out toward the left sideline.
But in a crazy twist, the ball took a high bounce off the turf and landed right in the arms of Ashley, who took the fumble in stride and raced 57 yards to the end zone to help put West ahead 7-0.
“I’ll have to see that again,” Lowe said. “I thought he (Besler) was down.”
After Besler missed two field goals on successive possessions, Emporia caught a break when West running back Brandon Abbott fumbled and Emporia’s Corey Bacon snatched the ball off the turf and returned it 17 yards to the West 13-yard line.
However, in a sign of how the night would ultimately go for the Spartans’ offense, Emporia got the ball down to the 3-yard line only to be turned away three straight times, forcing a 22-yard field goal from Blaze Witten that made it 7-3.
Though EHS got on the scoreboard, not scoring the touchdown didn’t sit right with the EHS offense.
“When you’re right there and you can see the end zone — it’s only 10 yards, 15 yards away — and you don’t do anything with it, it’s really disappointing,” EHS senior running back Edd Noonan said.
EHS dodged yet another bullet on West’s next possession when Besler underthrew a pass across the middle, allowing Seth Torres to make a diving interception that halted yet another West drive into Emporia territory. But three plays later, Mark Kolmer fumbled on a handoff, and West recovered the loose ball at the EHS 27-yard line.
The very next play, Besler hit a wide open Ashley down the seam to make it 14-3 West, and Emporia’s lifeline had seemingly been severed.
“We had some key turnovers,” Noonan said, “and we should have used some of the turnovers they had to our advantage. We just made some mistakes on offense. Anything you can think of, we couldn’t do.”
On Emporia’s next drive, Euler, who was under constant pressure all night long, threw a high lob pass back across his body into the middle of the field, where — guess who — West’s Ashley was waiting. Ashley snatched the pass and raced down the sideline 75 yards to the end zone for his third TD of the night to make it 21-3 with just 1:08 left to go before the half.
The lone West touchdown Ashley didn’t score perhaps broke the Spartans for good, as the Jaguars’ Todd Harmon returned the opening kickoff of the second half 85 yards for West’s final score of the night.
“That (the return) took a lot out of us,” Bacon said, “but we’ve got to fight through that stuff and play harder.”
The Emporia High defense did in fact stiffen in the second half, as West did not score again and only notched three more first downs the rest of the way. But the big plays had done their damage, and not even a late, 80-yard scoring drive by EHS that was capped by a 1-yard touchdown run by Kolmer could do much to raise the Spartans’ spirits.
“We knew we could score on them,” Noonan said. “It was just too late.”
Added Lowe: “We just can’t give up big plays like we did. I thought our defense played pretty well, but we gave up the kickoff return and the interception return and the big play at the first of the game. We’ve got to find a way to be better than that.”
Blue Valley West finished with 312 yards of offense, while Emporia struggled for every yard of the 172 it gained despite running 20 more plays than West. Noonan finished with 93 yards rushing, but the Spartans as a team ended with just 92 yards on the ground thanks in part to five sacks.
“We’ll get better, I guarantee it,” Lowe said. “We’re going to find a way to get better. We’ll go to work in practice and re-evaluate some things. That’s why you play the first game — to see where you’re at and to see what you need to get better at and go from there.
“We’ll get better.”
Blue Valley West 28, Emporia 10
Thursday at Blue Valley District Stadium
Emporia 3 0 0 7 — 10
BVW 7 14 7 0 — 28
First Quarter
BVW — Aaron Ashley 57 run (Mike Besler kick)
Second Quarter
Emp — Blaze Witten 22 field goal
BVW — Ashley 27 pass from Besler (Besler kick)
BVW — Ashley 75 interception return (Besler kick)
Third Quarter
BVW — Todd Harmon 85 kick return (Besler kick)
GAME STATISTICS
Emporia BVW
First downs 12 10
Rushes-yards 50-92 23-126
Comp-Att-Int 4-14-2 12-21-2
Passing yards 80 186
Total plays-yards 64-172 44-312
Fumbles-lost 5-2 5-2
Penalties-yards 1-15 7-88
Punts-average 7-35.6 2-39.0
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING — Emporia: Edd Noonan 20-93, Mark Kolmer 9-50, Taylor Euler 21-(-51); BVW: Aaron Ashley 2-62, Todd Harmon 6-28, Brandon Abbott 8-19, Mike Norris 4-10, Mike Besler 3-7.
PASSING — Emporia: Euler 4-14-2 80; BVW: Besler 12-21-2 186.
RECEIVING — Emporia: Corey Bacon 1-55, Harrison Stone 2-22, Noonan 1-3; BVW: Mark Rogers 2-23, Brian Grover 2-30, Josh Copp 3-46, Ashley 1-27, Dan Boan 2-29, Ryan Swartz 2-22.
PUNTING — Emporia: Brandon Childs 7-35.6; BVW: Zach Shriwise 2-39.0
RECORDS — Emporia 0-1; BVW 1-0.
jkgentz (anonymous) says...
Freshman - Blaze Witten kicked the Field Goal.
August 31, 2007 at 3:30 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ghost (anonymous) says...
Push from the front seven?? Their primary rush came from the outsides-our lone score was running to the middle-they totally cut off the roll-outs...
August 31, 2007 at 5:05 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )