3 weeks Ago
Vermilion Catholic quarterback Jonathan Dartez cruises in for a touchdown during the Eagles' 45-0 blanking of Breaux Bridge on Friday. ABBEVILLE - Vermilion Catholic's domination of Breaux Bridge on Friday night was complete. The Eagles stomped the Tigers 45-0 on the scoreboard but it was so much more than just the numbers.
VC outgained Breaux Bridge in rushing yards 156-36, passing yards 268-50, total yards 374-86, first downs 15-6 and turnovers 2-0. Vermilion Catholic scored points on 7 of 10 possessions in the game and the VC defense only allowed Breaux Bridge past midfield twice in the game and both of those times the visiting Tigers failed to convert on fourth down to end the drives without anything to show for it. "I'm super excited," VC coach Broc Prejean said.
"We had the fast start that we worked on all week. "We wanted to put ourselves in a better situation at halftime and the kids did that." Vermilion Catholic took the opening kickoff and scored four plays later and built a 28-0 lead at the break.
"The priority on defense was takeaways and Coach (Brett) Blakey had those guys ready to go and they did that," Prejean said. "All around it was complementary football in all three phases and I'm proud of the effort tonight." While the Eagles were flying high on their side of the field, the Tigers were just trying to make do as best they could on their side after some devastating news only a day before that definitely affected Coach Tyler Pierce's game plan.
"We were dealt a big blow," Pierce said. "Yesterday (Thursday) morning our starting quarterback, whose shoulder popped out on him last week, hurt it again getting out of bed, "Out QB 2 and QB 3 are both injured and luckily we had Landon Castille available to go." Breaux Bridge (0-2) basically had no choice but to go with his fourth quarterback and run a simplified version of the offense against Vermilion Catholic.
"He (Castille) did the best he could do and the offense tried their best to pick him up but the game just got away from us early." Even with the loss, Pierce said that he was proud of his team for doing their best in a bad situation. "I think that next week it's going to be better because we are going to have a week to see what Castille can do and work an offense around his strengths," the BBHS coach said.
No such problems for VC, though. A healthy Jonathon Dartez showed just what he can do as he rushed for 103 yards and three touchdowns and threw for 218 yards and another score as VC improved to 2-0 on the season and their regular season wins streak has now reached 27 straight games. But while everyone knows what the Eagles' offense is capable of, this win was a celebration of what the defense can do as well.
"Zeros are special and they are hard to come by," Prejean said. "They made plays when they had to and got after the quarterback. "You can't say enough.
A zero is fun to see from our guys." Senior linebacker Allen McLain summed up how the defense felt in posting the shutout. "We were expecting a good, physical team but we just came out stronger," he said.
"It feels good to put a zero on the board. "Our sophomore year we did it just about every game. It feels great to do it.
The offense has their job to score points and we have our job to not give up points. That's how we complement each other.".
