Orlich, Portage race past Lake Central

PORTAGE — Austin Orlich wouldn’t go as far as to say he was embarrassed, but he wasn’t exactly pleased after he was chased down on a 76-yard run that should have been an 80-yard touchdown run in the second quarter Friday night against Lake Central.

“Well, it’s not exactly exciting to get caught on a play like that,” the Portage senior said, sheepishly. Even his coach gave him a little good-natured grief for it.

“I walked up to him on the sideline and said, ‘I thought you were fast,’” joked Portage coach Mark Peterson.

So when Orlich broke free again on the second play of the fourth quarter and saw nothing but daylight -- and a game-clinching score -- ahead of him, there was no way anybody was catching him. He was getting all 50 yards of that touchdown run.

“I definitely wanted that one,” Orlich said. And for good reason. Besides soothing the old ego, it all but sealed Portage’s 26-7 victory over Lake Central in the conference opener for both teams, leaving Portage at 3-0 and looking very much like contenders in a suddenly wide-open Duneland.

The Portage players were so excited after picking up the win in one of the region’s budding rivalries, they started chanting “Warm up the bus!” along with the students in the bleachers in the final two minutes, until an assistant silenced them and said, “They get to say that; you don’t.”

But it was tough to blame them for being so pumped. After a couple of frustrating seasons, Portage has the look of a very good team -- a stifling defense that held Lake Central to 193 total yards of offense, a big-play offense with two explosive tailbacks in Orlich and Ryan Cherry, and a rapidly blossoming sophomore quarterback in Eric Melcic.

Orlich finished with 184 yards and the score on just 13 carries, while Cherry ran for 106 yards and a touchdown and also caught a 55-yard touchdown pass.

That pass, a beautiful strike from Melcic that Cherry caught in stride behind the LC secondary, broke a 7-7 tie late in the third quarter and altered the complexion of the game.

Portage’s sputtering offense gained confidence, and LC’s stout defense seemed to slacken a bit. It was also a potential sign of things to come, once Melcic -- thrown into the starting role at an early age -- finds his comfort zone and the offense doesn’t need to rely so heavily on Orlich and Cherry.

“It almost gives me chills how good I think we can be when everything’s going right like that,” Orlich said.

It wasn’t always going right, though. The Indians fumbled the ball seven times, recovering the first six as most came on bad snaps and other “controllable fumbles,” as Peterson put it.

The Indians now have 18 fumbles in three games. And Lake Central -- whose defense was very sharp aside from four very big plays -- was frustrated it couldn’t capitalize.

“That’s one of the things we saw on film,” LC coach Bill Melby said. “They put the ball on the ground a lot and we haven’t. And tonight, we turned the ball over instead. We’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

LC (2-1, 0-1) lost one fumble and threw one interception. Dillon Jamroz was the lone bright spot for the offense, running for 108 yards on 19 carries.

Lake Central actually got on the board first, with quarterback Ryan Hennessey (8-of-21, 65 yards) plunging in from a yard out for a touchdown midway through the second quarter.

Two plays later, Orlich responded with his 76-yard run, pulled down by LC’s Jon Hurley at the 4, and Cherry punched it in on the next play to tie it at 7-7.

At the end of a mostly quiet third quarter, Melcic found Cherry for the 55-yarder and a 14-7 lead with 1:46 to go in the quarter. LC then had a 70-yard touchdown pass from Hennessey to Hurley called back for offensive pass interference and Orlich capitalized with his 50-yard score to all but put the game out of reach at 20-7.

Cherry’s sack of Hennessey killed off the last LC rally at the Portage 28, and Caleb McKee capped things off with a 30-yard interception return for a touchdown with 1:49 to go in the game.

“Defensively, we’ve played phenomenal all year,” Peterson said. “And offensively, we continue to step up.”

Melby, meanwhile, was frustrated, but far from despondent. It’s only the first game of conference play and he’s still confident that his Indians will be in the thick of things until the end.

“The reality is, I’ll take my team anytime,” he said. “We’re going to bounce back, I guarantee you that.”

Contact Mark Lazerus at 648-3140 or mlazerus@post-trib.com. Visit his blog at blogs.post-trib.com/lazerus.