Heritage wins turnover and line of scrimmage battle to beat Vintage
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
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The thing about sports is the core of all of them is the same, which means the ways to win are the same as well. In the case of football, winning the line of scrimmage battle is always where the game is won and lost.
So in Friday’s final non-league contest at Memorial Stadium, Heritage was able to win this key battle as they beat Vintage, 21-12.
The Patriots (2-2) were able to win this game due in large part to running back Mehki Adanandus who carried the ball 24 times for 182 yards. He was also running through wide-open holes all night long as well.
“Quick guys make a lot of moves so that’s always going to be a tough thing,” Vintage head coach Dylan Leach said of the challenge of stopping Adanandus. “But I think the credit has to go to their line. I mean, they’re the ones that kind of open that up for him and, and so they were they were just kind of outplayed us up front tonight on both sides of the ball.”
Adanandus accounted for a pair of touchdowns in the game as well. The first of those came from just 8 yards away to give Heritage their first lead of the game with 3:59 left in the first half.
His second touchdown came under much different circumstances and was an absolute backbreaker. On a 3rd down and a long 33 from the 35-yard line, he found the end zone to give the Patriots a 14-6 lead at the half.
The only other score for Heritage came when Phillip Babbitt found JJ Kinaird over the middle for a 27-yard touchdown score that made it a 21-12 game with 3:14 left in the third quarter.
However, the game changed when the Crushers were driving while leading 6-0, and a fumble changed the whole game. In the game, Vintage committed two turnovers as well.
“That’s the name of the game, right,” Leach said of the turnovers. “ Turnovers are gonna flip the script. So yeah, we’ve just got to take care of the ball and be better at that situation. Again, all credit goes to Coach Dave and his staff over there and, and preparing those guys, and they came out and whipped us tonight.”
Vintage (1-3) did all of their scoring in the first half. With 9:27 left in the second quarter, Jefferey Page scored from 15 yards out to give the Crushers their only lead of the night at 6-0 as the extra point attempt was missed following a bad snap.
Page again found the end zone with 5:44 left in the third, this time from five yards out. On the two-point try, he was unable to get into the end zone to tie the game.
“Jefferey is always that guy, and he’s always doing that,” Leach continued. “I thought Trevin (Cullinane) did the same. I thought both those guys worked really hard and ran really hard. Once you get into a two-score situation, though, it’s hard to run our offense. So we got to we kind of got to open it up. But yeah, he is who he is. We know who he is and he’s going to give us everything he’s got.”
In the game, he was the bell-cow running back toasting the ball 23 times for 139 yards in the contest.
The game was also the debut for sophomore quarterback Blake Porter. He took over signal-calling duties this week because Si Sabbagha was needed on the defensive side of the ball, where he is one of the Crushers’ best defensive backs.
“Blake’s gonna be a really good one,” Leach said of the promising sophomore. “He’s solid. He’s smart. He understands what’s going on. He’s gonna make a little bit of sophomore mistakes and we understand that. But the move was much more based on our defensive outcome and needing Si to play defense full-time.”
Porter was solid in the game. He made all the right reads and maybe more impressively memorized all 85 plays in the playbook this week.
With this game, the non-league portion of the schedule is now complete for Vintage. They will next turn to Vine Valley Athletic League play next Friday night at 7 p.m. when they host American Canyon.
