Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Little Rock Central jumps on Rogers High
ROGERS — Little Rock Central and Rogers High combined to score 120 points a week ago against their opponents.
Neither team quite matched those fireworks on Friday at Whitey Smith Stadium, but the visiting Tigers did muster a healthy offensive output and headed back to Pulaski County with a 42-25 nonconference victory.
“We still have a lot of improving to do,” Little Rock Central coach Kent Laster said. “The penalties we’ll need to get cleaned up but the main thing is we scored enough to win and held them to 25 because that’s an explosive offense with a great group of receivers and that quarterback.”
Rogers (0-2) is now searching for answers with just one more nonconference game left before 7A-West play begins on Sept. 27 at Van Buren.
“It seemed like the same thing as last week,” Rogers coach Mike Loyd said. “We take a 58-54 lead and then give up a one-play drive. We’ve got to bow up and decide if we want to win games or not. You can’t win games doing stuff like that. We’ve got to make tackles and find a way to make plays on defense and get stops.”
Junior quarterback Lawson Gunn threw four touchdown passes for the Tigers, and the one that broke the Mounties’ back was an 80-yarder on a screen pass to Sam Franklin right after they had cut the Tigers’ lead to a field goal on the previous drive.
“It’s like popping the air out of a balloon,” Loyd said. “You score, and then they hit a screen for 80 yards. It’s tough when you work on screens and then that happens. Someone’s going to have to bow up on defense and make a play when it counts at some point.”
Gunn finished 17-of-24 for 348 yards and four touchdowns. His favorite target was Antoine Westbrook, who caught nine passes for 167 yards, two of which went for scores.
The Mounties got on the board first near the end of the first quarter when Hunter Loyd found Mason Ross on a 16-yard strike.
Central answered by scoring 21 in the second stanza, using a pair of Lawson Gunn touchdown passes and a 59-yard jaunt from Sam Franklin to take an 11-point advantage at halftime.
Loyd finished the game with 331 total yards—269 passing and 62 rushing. He threw 54 times and completed 25.
Both teams had a combined 30 penalties that totaled 273 yards.
FOUR DOWNS
• Rogers honored its Mountie Athletics class of 2019 Hall of Fame inductees at halftime.
• LR Central assistant coach Clifton Ealy once served on Houston Nutt’s staff at Arkansas and also on Fayetteville High’s staff.
• Loyd connected on his first seven passes of the evening before throwing an incompletion. • Next week Central has an open date, while Rogers travels to Little Rock to take on Parkview.