ORANGE PARK, Fla. – At the halfway point of the regular season, Bolles coach Matthew Toblin is getting a pretty good feel for what works and what doesn’t with his team, particularly the defense.
If the Bulldogs still are figuring things out, that’s little consolation to the remainder of the teams on the schedule and it was very bad news for Oakleaf on Friday night.
With back Xander Edwards topping 100 yards again, Bolles ground down the host Knights with long drives. At the same time, the Bulldogs defense rose up with some excellent play up front, capped by defensive lineman Asher Ghioto scoring the final touchdown of the Varsity 4 Game of the Week, a 38-6 romp over previously unbeaten Oakleaf, ranked third in the Varsity 4 Super 10.
Start on offense, where the Bulldogs (4-1), ranked fourth Super 10, churned out a 14-play scoring drive against the Knights (4-1) to go with a pair of 12-play possessions and seven- and eight-play drives that led to scores.
They battered 6-foot-2, 215-pound sophomore Edwards into the line 25 times for 181 yards, giving him 870 rushing yards and 12 touchdowns this season and allowing him to reach at least 100 yards in every game this year.
“As the game goes on, that becomes a bigger deal, eating clock,” Toblin said. “That’s a byproduct of them being good on defense. They’re going to make you drive the field. We were consistent and efficient. At the end, it was let’s try to eat up the clock and — their offense is very good — not let them have a chance to come back.”
More impressive is that it was done with offensive lineman JJ Sparks, a Miami commitment, sidelined with an injury. Still, Bolles brought the hammer, with scoring drives that lasted 5 minutes, 3 seconds, 7:48 and 5:57.
Want to see a quick strike? Bolles had that, too. After Edwards capped the first scoring drive of 14 plays with a 1-yard touchdown run, he tore through Oakleaf for 77 yards and a score on a two-play possession for a 14-0 lead.
Through the opening drive of the second half, one in which the Bulldogs took 12 plays and more than seven minutes for a 34-yard Langston Florence field goal, Bolles converted five of nine third-down attempts and, when failure set in there, two fourth-down efforts.
“Our coaches put in great schemes,” said Edwards, who also hauled in a pair of passes for 45 yards. “We know what the defense is going to do. We play with relentless effort, and the O-line is very good. Without them, I don’t succeed. People coming in, four-star JJ Sparks out, it doesn’t matter, our backups are ready to go.”
For good measure, an eight-play possession at the end of the first half took almost all the remaining time off the clock and ended when Naeem Burroughs took an end around, barely stopped running and floated a touchdown pass to Camden Tietze for a 21-6 lead.
So, it was just a matter of the defense stopping a Knights team that entered the contest averaging more than 411 yards and 36 points a game. Bolles, too, had the recent specter of allowing 588 yards and 40 points in its loss to St. Augustine two weeks ago.
“This game really shows how we improved,” said senior defensive lineman Chance Faucheaux, who had a pair of half sacks and a quarterback pressure. “St. Augustine definitely was a wake-up call. We went to a 4-3 (defensive alignment) and really locked in.”
That was obvious, as the Bulldogs hounded quarterback Jack McKissock with six sacks and several pressures, throwing off Oakleaf’s balance.
“The amount of pressure they were able to put on was huge,” Toblin said. “We’re growing on that side of the ball. There’s a bunch of new starters over there. We have to figure them out. Our job is to put them in position to be successful. We probably didn’t do that against St. Augustine.”
Also, Bolles had allowed 50 points last season against the Knights, a game the Bulldogs also won. Even with Bolles breaking in new players and Oakleaf returning a good amount of offensive talent from last season, there was no repeat.
There were great individual efforts all along the front. Thomas Green had 1.5 sacks, including one on fourth down that stopped a Knights drive at Bolles 1. Ghioto, the 6-foot-5, 240-pound sophomore, had a solo sack, was in on two other sacks, had a pressure and, for good measure, when Oakleaf cut the lead to 14-6 with a score late in the first half, he swatted down the extra point.
Ghioto capped the game with a 16-yard fumble return for a score, his first touchdown in high school. That, of course, came courtesy of a strip sack, this one by Christian Hayes.
“We have to go out there and play like it’s 0-0 every time,” said Ghioto, who also helped squash an Oakleaf drive by swarming McKissock on a fourth-down play. “We realized we needed to change something. We flipped a switch after the St. Augustine game. We’ll see what it all comes out to, but this was a great game.”
Not so much for the Knights. Oakleaf had chances at times. There was a missed field goal early. There was the drive to the Bolles 1 that was stopped when Ghioto read McKissock rolling out and Green cleaned up for the sack. There was a frantic effort to drive the field and salvage something at the end of the game but that too ended up with no points as the clock ran out.
“This week, I feel like we had a lack of preparation,” said Knights Fareed Coleman, who rushed for 82 yards and whose 7-yard scoring run gave Oakleaf its only points. “We’ve got a very good team. We can bounce back from it. But this was hard on us.”
The Bulldogs know the feeling, but the team bounced back from its own difficult loss two weeks ago. Now, they look like the same old Bolles.
And, if the coaches still are finding ways to use their players’ strengths, it will be a tough season for their opponents.
“Happy, not satisfied,” Toblin said “Incredibly happy with the progress we made and where we’re at, but not satisfied because I know we can do better.”
(4) Bolles 38, (3) Oakleaf 6
Bolles, 0, 21, 3, 14 — 38
Oakleaf, 0, 6, 0, 0 — 6
B – Xander Edwards 1 run (Langston Florence kick)
B – Edwards 77 run (Florence kick)
O – Fareed Coleman 7 run (kick blocked)
B – Camden Tietze 33 pass from Naeem Burroughs (Florence kick)
B – Florence 34 FG
B – Burroughs 5 pass from Jaden Weatherly (Florence kick)
B – Asher Ghioto 16 fumble return (Florence kick)
Category: B — O
First downs: 18 — 17
Rushes-yards: 33-189 — 24-63
Passing: 182 — 245
Comp-Att-Int: 12-19-0 — 19-25-0
Fumbles-lost: 0-0 — 2-2
Penalties-Yards: 8-88 — 9-82
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING — B: Edwards 26-181, Jaden Weatherly 7-8. O: Coleman 12-82, Ezra Brown 2-10, Cornell Moses 1-(-3), Jack McKissock 9-(-26).
PASSING — B: Weatherly 8-12-0-116, Luke Toland 3-6-0-33, Burroughs 1-1-0-33. O: McKissock 19-25-0-245.
RECEIVING — B: Burroughs 2-43, Edwards 2-43, Corbyn Fordham 4-36, Tietze 1-33, Truett Henderson 3-27. O:Michael Conner 5-86, Trace Burney 4-62, Coleman 4-48, Syncere Murphy 4-25, Denero Jacobs 1-17, Jordin Price 1-7.