Cardinals control clock, move to 8-0

BENTON HARMONY GROVE 42, LITTLE ROCK HALL 12

There’s a saying around the Benton Harmony Grove program that the opposing defense is always wrong.

If the Cardinals’ record this season, and their performance Friday night, are any indication, they might be spot on.

Harmony Grove defeated Little Rock Hall 42-12 at Scott Field in 4A-4 Conference play to extend the best start to a season in school history to eight in a row.

The Cardinals came out slower than they would want, trading turnovers with the Warriors to bring the first quarter to an end 0-0.

Harmony Grove (8-0, 6-0) employs the famed Wing-T offense, so the slow start against a Hall (1-5, 1-4) defense that was mixing defensive looks early didn’t come as a shock to Coach Mike Guthrie.

“Sometimes that’s why we do get a slow start because we got to kind of figure out what it is they’re trying to do on defense so we can combat that on offense,” Guthrie said.

His team ended the quarter with the ball on the 1-yard line, primed to open the scoring for the night. And that’s exactly what senior Irvin Guerrero did, making the score 7-0.

Two offensive drives and 11 minutes of game time later Harmony Grove held a 21-0 lead heading into the half thanks to a pair of quarterback sneaks by Lane Richardson.

That is exactly how Guthrie and the Cardinals like to play — slow and methodical but effective. They scored on three of their four first-half possessions.

“Our philosophy is ‘If we got the football, you can’t score,’ ” Guthrie said. “And we’re going to try to control the clock as much as we possibly can, and try to score at the end of it.”

Following a defensive stop, the Cardinals drove back the other way and junior Peyton Potter rushed 16 yards to reach the end zone and make it 28-0.

“We kind of came out a little flat but got their attention at halftime, and I felt like they did a good job of stepping up and accepting the challenge that we gave them,” Guthrie said.

With less than five minutes to play in the third quarter, Hall took over possession at its own 47-yard line following the first Harmony Grove punt of the night. One play later, running back Myles House was bursting into the end zone following his 53-yard run to make the score 28-6. The junior had more than 100 yards rushing on his first two carries of the second half.

The Cardinals scored twice more on 12 and 17-yard runs by Tristen Hogan and Maddox Moore, respectively.

Hall quarterback Jakorei Carter’s fadeaway jump throw split those two scores to give Hall 12 points.

Other than the drive in which Carter’s touchdown pass came, the Cardinals held the Warriors out of the red zone on all of their other drives.

With an offense that plays at the type of pace that Harmony Grove does, Guthrie relies on his defense to capitalize on opponents’ disrupted game plans. So far this season it’s done that — holding six of its eight opponents under 20 points.

“The defense played well tonight,” Guthrie said. “We knew they got really good athletes, and we knew that, if they start going away, you can’t just take off or start chasing. You’ve got to do what you’re coached to do, stay at home and wait for that guy to come back. I feel like, for the most part, we did a pretty good job of that.”