Edwardsville rolls over Granite City 40-0

From left, Edwardsville's Nathan Crone (80), Jacob Modrusic (71), Jeff Clubb (52) and Neil Goettermann (53) keep a Tiger drive going during their 40-0 win over Granite City at Granite City's Memorial Stadium Friday night.

GRANITE CITY – Edwardsville's football team wasn't exactly hitting on all cylinders last week, but did enough to knock off O'Fallon in the final moments of their game last week.

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The Tigers knew they had some things to fix, and fix them they did – and it showed as they ran over Southwestern Conference rival Granite City 40-0 to spoil the Warriors' homecoming at Granite City's Memorial Stadium.

“Not turning over the ball helped,” said Tiger coach Matt Martin, “and we did have a couple of penalties, but they weren't drive-killers. We've wanted to execute well tonight, and we did for the most part.

Injuries haven't helped the Tigers – they were missing Jackson Morrisey, who broke a leg in last week's win over O'Fallon, among others – but their replacements stepped up when they needed to respond.

“We've had kids hurt, and while we do miss them, it's also a kind of next man in,” Martin said. “They've worked as hard as anyone in practice, and they made the most of their opportunities.”

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The Warriors have struggled this year – their only win was against Riverview Gardens in Week 2 – but Granite City coach Carl Luehmann was happy with his team's efforts. “Our kids have been playing hard, and we've had good practices,” Luehmann said. “It's been great to come to practice this year; we've got good kids. They go hard all the time.

“We have 14 seniors this year and I'm proud of all of them. Edwardsville's one of the best teams in the area, but we didn't back down from them and played as hard as we could.

The Tigers opened the scoring by taking advantage of a Warrior fumble on the opening drive, getting a 6-yard TD run from sophomore Kaden McCann with just 1:18 elapsed in the opening quarter; Trentan Daley's convert made it 7-0 early. Not long after that, Dan Marinko (12-for-15 for 170 yards before coming out early in the second half) hit Luke Posey for a 39-yard TD pass which made it 13-0 with 6:19 left in the first term.

Nathan Crone extended the Tiger lead to 20-0 early in the second quarter when he took in a 35-yard TD pass from Marinko, who then made it 26-0 with a 2-yard TD plunge with 4:24 left in the half. McCann got his second major score when he hauled in a 36-yard pass from Marinko with 25 seconds left in the half, and Monty Sharpe ended the scoring with a 35-yard strike from Marinko just 57 seconds into the third term to make it 40-0 Edwardsville and invoke the running-clock rule.

Granite City threatened to score a couple of times in the second half, but both drives ended on interceptions and the Warriors couldn't put together another drive before the clock expired.

Edwardsville went to 7-1 overall, 6-0 in the SWC with the win, and travel to Belleville East next week with a chance to win the league outright. Granite City fell to 1-7 overall and 0-6 in the SWC and closes out at home next week against O'Fallon.

 

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