Published: August 16, 2008 12:06 am         

Braves, Knights offenses both move ball well

TERRE HAUTE — Although he’s just a sophomore, Trent Lancaster of Northview was the more experienced quarterback Friday night as the Knights visited Terre Haute South for a controlled high school football scrimmage.

But after Northview moved the ball more efficiently early in the evening, South’s junior Bryn Schwartz eventually found his range and the host Braves wound up with a slight statistical edge as both teams prepared for their regular-season openers in another week.

The Braves finished with six touchdowns to Northview’s one, but there could be a couple of asterisks attached to that stat. The Knights twice wound up their offensive series inside the South 5-yard line with no more plays remaining to be run, and one of South’s scores came on a fifth-down touchdown pass that reflected the casual record keeping.

“I’m pretty optimistic,” coach George Gettle of the Knights said afterward. “I thought we executed fairly well.”

“I saw some good things,” echoed South coach Mark Raetz. “Obviously I also saw some things we need to fix before we go to Bloomington South [next Friday].”

Each team started with a series of 15 plays from its own 35-yard line, and the Knights were at their best in this segment. They never had to give up the ball, although their 15th play was a third-down pass that fell incomplete in the end zone — Lancaster’s first unsuccessful pass on the drive.

“We moved all the way down the field,” Gettle noted later. “We were in a groove, and we gained a lot of confidence from that.”

“I didn’t really like that [series] very much,” Raetz said.

South also didn’t score on its first series, and Northview’s Zac Niehaus had an interception to force the Braves to begin again from the 35.

“We had three turnovers [during the evening] that we can’t have, and a couple of crucial penalties,” Raetz said later.

On a 10-play series starting 10 yards from the goal line, the South defense got a goal-line interception by Elias Brown and stopped Northview on downs once. The Knights finally got in the end zone on their next-to-last play when Lancaster scrambled 8 yards for a score.

Schwartz, who finished as the evening’s leading rusher, went 9 yards on South’s first play from the 10-yard line, then sneaked across for a score. Before the Braves’ 10-play series ended, he also completed his first two passes of the night — both touchdowns to tight end Michael Mardis — and also scored on a 3-yard run. Northview also got a takeaway, tackle Mitch Haviland coming up with an errant option pitch.

The last varsity series were 12-play sets starting from the opponent’s 35-yard line. Northview was stopped once on downs at the 10, then threatened again after Lancaster completed a 31-yard pass to Justin White. But that was the Knights’ 11th play, and a penalty wiped out a Lancaster-to-White touchdown pass on the next one.

“Defensively I saw several good things … and they tightened down near the goal line,” Raetz said afterward.

South’s last series got off to a good start on a 17-yard run by 5-foot-6 Tre Stephens — the “big” back in the Braves’ backfield at that time, teamed with fellow sophomore P.J. Montgomery. On first down, Schwartz fell on a low shotgun snap, followed by an incomplete pass, a penalty, a 14-yard pass to Jonathan Thacker to set up fourth-and-3, a sack by Northview’s Jordan Keller — and then another touchdown pass to Mardis.

Three plays later, Schwartz found Thacker for a 32-yard touchdown pass. The final play was an interception by Northview’s Kyle McCoy.

Two junior varsity series that followed included just three first downs but one score — a 59-yard touchdown pass from South’s Jimmy Maxwell to Kevin Bracken.