PHOTO BY KATIE MORRISON.
Marblehead’s Jaason Lopez looks to outrun Classical’s Cameron Greene.
By Steve Krause
LYNN — Can anyone slow down the Marblehead football team this season?
It doesn’t appear so. But Classical coach Tim Phelps knows one thing for sure: you’re not going to do it missing tackles and giving up big plays.
“They are very good,” said Phelps after Friday’s 34-6 defeat at the hands of the Magicians. “But tackling was an issue for us. You’re not going to upset a team like 6-0 Marblehead giving up big plays.”
Four out of Marblehead’s five touchdowns were either scored on, or set up by, plays of more than 30 yards. Right off the bat, on the Magicians’ first possession, Jaason Lopez (14 carries, 89 yards) took off for a 37-yard gainer on the second play from scrimmage. That led to a 10-yard touchdown pass from Drew Gally to Andy Clough and, with Sam Paquette’s PAT, it was 7-0 less than four minutes into the game.
“You look at the score and you think blowout, but in the first half, there were only about two or three plays that separated this from being a tight game,” said Marblehead coach Jim Rudloff. “We had some fluky big plays … plays that weren’t even designed to be big plays.”
While Marblehead was still revving up the engines, Classical was having a tough time getting anything going offensively. Finally, midway through the first quarter, the Rams got a break when Ishmael Johnson picked off Gally and set his team up with a first down at its own 34. That resulted in a long drive that netted nothing on the scoreboard, one of two such opportunities the Rams missed when the game was still competitive.
“We have to score when we get those chances,” said Phelps. “Last couple of weeks, we’ve been stuck in the mud, but this week it looked as if we were getting something going.”
Classical welcomed the return of running back Marcus Rivera, who ran for 70 yards on 15 carries. He was complimented nicely by Alex Pedro (9-85) to give Classical a decent ground game.
However, Marblehead’s was better. This was Gally’s game. The quarterback ran for 165 yards and two touchdowns, and threw for 151 yards and two scores for a total haul of 316 yards all by himself (Marblehead had 421 yards of total offense).
The Magicians made it 14-0 in the second quarter when Justin Faia caught a 57-yard pass from Gally, and 20-0 later in the first half, with 2:02 to go, on a 70-yard scamper by Gally, who had nearly the entire middle of the field all to himself.
Classical had a chance to make inroads, but quarterback Matt Lauria fumbled on the Magician 8-yard-line with inside of a minute to go in the half to end that threat.
Paquette scored on a five-yard run with 6:44 to go in the third quarter to make it 27-0 and Gally scored his second TD early in the fourth quarter on a 32-yard rush.
Finally, with 4:30 to go in the game, the Rams ended a two-plus game scoring drought when Lauria ran one in from nine yards out.