NORTHAMPTON — To go or not to go was not the question for the Drury football team facing fourth down and a yard from its own 25-yard line to start the fourth quarter at Smith Vocational on Friday.
Drury senior quarterback Anthony Pettengill evades a Smith Vocational tackler on Friday in Northampton.
The question was how.
“We knew we were going for it. We just had to decide what play we wanted to go with,” Drury coach Al Marceau said. “Jayshawn (Moore), he runs like a hammer.”
The Blue Devils handed the ball to Moore, their fullback, and he plowed ahead for four yards. Drury only led by a touchdown at the time, but that play sparked a 14-point fourth quarter that helped the Blue Devils pull away 26-6.
Four plays after the conversion, Drury freshman receiver Jackson Powell burned the Vikings defense for a 35-yard touchdown up the left sideline. That put the Blue Devils (4-1) ahead 20-6 with 8 minutes, 1 second left.
“They were playing really, really close up on me and we just noticed that and took advantage of it. It’s stuff we practice and hope that situations come in games,” Powell said.
Powell was so open that he had to wait for the ball to drop all on his own.
“Don’t drop the ball,” he said. “It helps if you don’t think.”
That was the second time Powell took the top off the defense. He also put Drury ahead 12-0 on a 50-yard bomb with 7:26 to halftime. Senior Anthony Pettengill threw both passes and finished 4-of-4 for 105 yards and the two scores on the night.
“We showed we have other playmakers,” Marceau said. “What was nice is to be able to put points on the board and not just run Louis (Guilotte) over and over again. At the end, he was still pretty fresh.”
Guilotte carried the ball 15 times for 153 yards and two touchdowns. He gave Drury the lead in the first quarter with a 29-yard touchdown run breaking tackles up the middle with 3:41 on the clock.
That followed a 23-minute delay when half the field lights went out 4:47 into the game. They clicked off again with 3:35 to go in the second quarter. The referees decided to observe the halftime break then to let the lights come back on and move directly from the second quarter to the third quarter once that time expired.
“We’ve had adversity like this before,” Powell said. “We stayed composed and fought it out as a team.”
The Vikings (1-5) were driving when they exited the locker room, and Caden Guimond punched in a 1-yard touchdown on a sweep with 30.8 seconds remaining in the second quarter.
Smith Vocational won the opening coin toss and deferred, so it received the third quarter kickoff. The Vikings embarked on a 15-play, 37-yard drive aided by two Drury encroachment penalties that reached the red zone. On fourth-and-6 inside the Drury 15, Smith Vocational quarterback Alex Martinez only picked up five yards. A Smith Vocational touchdown would have tied the game at 12.
Instead, Drury responded with the 35-yard pass to Powell to go back up two scores.
The Vikings went three-and-out on their next drive, and a 47-yard Guilotte touchdown run put the game completely out of reach with 3:18 remaining.
“We’ve created a pattern — which is not a good pattern — of playing good enough defense to not let them score but to not have the ability to have the ball in our hands to let our offense work,” Marceau said. “We’ve had games where we’ve run 25 plays and scored in the 20s and win the game. I want 35-40 plays. We’ve just got to work on getting off the field.”
The Blue Devils will next host Monument Mountain on Oct. 30.