Senior Trent Davies carried the load for the Buckeye Valley football team, scoring two touchdowns to lead the Barons to a 17-9 non-league win over Mount Vernon Friday night in Delaware.
Davies carried the ball 43 times for 185 yards to lead the way, including a work-horse load of 30 carries in the second half alone.
“I’m actually feeling pretty good right now … not too beat up,” he said. “I’ll probably be feeling it tomorrow morning though.”
Davies carried 12 times on BV’s 13-play scoring drive in the third quarter, including a 1-yard touchdown run. Felipe Scharff’s extra point gave the Barons (2-1) their first lead at 10-9 with 4:24 left in the third quarter.
“The kid’s a stud … he gets stronger as the game goes on,” BV coach Matt Stephens said. “He had 43 carries and a lot of his yards came after (contact). He’s just a tough guy to bring down. He’s just a workhorse.”
After a three and out by MV, Davies carried it 10 more times on an 11-play, 45-yard drive.
He capped it with a 5-yard touchdown run to push the lead to 17-9 with 9:36 left in the game after picking up the necessary inches on a 4th-and-inches from just outside the 5 on the previous play.
“He’s a freak physically,” Stephens said. “He is conditioned to do that. Forty-three carries is a little much, but we ran him another 28 times with six catches at (Delaware) Hayes and he toted the rock 20 times against Bexley.”
BV has bounced back after its heartbreaking loss to Hayes in the opening week. Stephens said his team didn’t recover until the following Wednesday.
“Everything in the weight room is Hayes, Hayes, Hayes and then when you lose that game – there’s a huge energy drop,” Stephens said. “We played well (against Bexley) and we had a good week of practice coming in.”
“We took a negative and turned it into a positive,” Davies said. “(We) work hard every day at practice (aiming to) always try to have the best practice we’ve ever had (and be) ready for anything.”
MV took the lead on its first drive, going 79 yards on 11 plays to set up a Sam Stanley 23-yard field goal for a 3-0 lead with 6:01 left in the first.
Logan Tate caught a 19-yard pass from Jaxon Gregory and Kaden Daniels followed with a 26-yard catch and run on the next play to set up the field goal.
Tate won a jump ball and went the remaining 30 yards untouched to finish off a 44-yard touchdown catch from Gregory to give the Yellow Jackets (1-2) a 9-0 lead with 11:46 left in the second quarter.
BV struggled offensively for much of the first half. But, Grant Owens, who completed just one of his first seven passes for minus-3 yards, got hot just before halftime.
He completed six straight passes to move BV 70 yards down to the MV 13.
A fumbled snap stalled the drive and Scharff kicked a 28-yard field goal with 2 seconds left in the half to get the Barons on the board.
“We knew we didn’t play well in the first half,” Stephens said. “We just kind of shot ourselves in the foot in the first half. We can’t beat ourselves against good teams. And then we came back in the second half.”
Next up, BV opens MOAC play at home against River Valley Friday at 7 p.m.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
