Panthers earn much-needed victory

Font Size

Email

Bookmark

Black Text

White Text

WHEATFIELD -- This is exactly what the Griffith Panthers needed.

A close game at halftime turned into a 41-14 Griffith rout against in the second half against winless Kankakee Valley Friday night at Fred Jones Field. And for a team like the Panthers, who came into the game a surprising 1-3, it just what they needed to help get their season back on track.

"Oh yeah, there's no doubt about it, everybody needs a win," Griffith coach Russ Radtke said. "It's just too bad that we were 1-3 coming into tonight, you know? We're playing with some injuries right now. Some starters were out, who were resting and hopefully they'll be back next week. So we've got to give it to those other guys who filled in. They did a good job for us."

Filling in for injured starters were Ethan Adams at nose guard and Mark Blount at running back. Blount, who also plays defensive back and picked off a pass in the third quarter, ran eight times for 60 yards.

Sophomore back Ed Johnson carried nine times for 55 yards and three touchdowns and quarterback Greg Joyce carried 14 times for 64 yards and one TD.

The Panthers (2-3 overall, 1-2 Northwest Crossroads) capitalized on most of their chances this week, as opposed to the past couple games.

Griffith only punted once, scored on their first three possessions of the game and racked up a whopping 470 yards of total offense utilizing a new-look hurry-up attack.

The Panthers churned out 319 yards on the ground and Joyce added 149 through the air on 6-for-6 passing -- including an 79-yard TD strike to Ryan Galiher with just 7.8 seconds left in the first quarter to make it 13-0 Griffith.

Rather than going with the most recent trend of teams using the hurry up to get to the line of scrimmage quickly and assess the defense, the Panthers hurried up just to hurry up and keep the defense off-balance.

"That's something we want to do so they can't change the defense," Radtke said. "We didn't use it earlier in the year, and maybe that's what we needed to do. If an opponent can't bring new guys in … (KV) got caught one time with two new guys on the field trying to make adjustments. It's just something to try and keep them in the defense they're in, so we can just block and go against that defense."

The Kougars (0-4, 0-3) made it a game in the second quarter. They capitalized on a costly series of penalties against Griffith that set them up inside the Panther's 10 first and goal midway through the quarter, and then scored on a 7-yard TD run by Dylan Patrick to make it 13-7.

After another Griffith score made it 19-7, the Kougars marched it back down again and scored on a 7-yard TD pass from Zach Overby that was caught out of mid-air by Patrick after it was bobbled by Kyle DeJong.

That made it 19-14 at the break, and Griffith knew the second half needed to be different.

"They just knew that some good things happened for KV that had to be countered, and we had to get a little bit more coverage in the areas where they were picking up some big fourth down passes and the touchdown pass," Radtke said of his team. "But that was just a heads-up play by their guy."

The second half was all Griffith, though, as the Panthers scored once in the third on a 14-yard run by Mark Butkus and twice in the fourth on runs by Johnson.

"I can sum it up in one word - execution," KV head coach Mike Peo said. "Griffith executed what it wanted to do and we didn't. Same old song and dance. (We're) down right now. I know these guys pretty well. But we'll get them back up and ready to go for next week."