Central Hinds blitzes St. Al in second half

Published 8:04 pm Thursday, January 18, 2018

RAYMOND — Earlier this season, St. Aloysius boys’ soccer coach Scott Mathis said his team was coming for Central Hinds and its MAIS Class AAA championship.

The only problem is, it doesn’t look like Central Hinds is going anywhere.

Houston Ezell scored two goals and assisted on another, Jeffery Richburg also scored twice, and Central Hinds racked up seven goals in the second half to rout St. Aloysius 8-0 Thursday afternoon.
It was the 65th consecutive victory for the four-time defending Class AAA champion Cougars, who improved to 5-0 this season.

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“The worst thing was, we were 1-0 at the half and we had the best part of the field going down the field and we had nothing. We got away from our game and started doing everything on our own. If you don’t move down the field together, something’s wrong, and that’s what we got away from,” St. Al coach Scott Mathis said.

St. Al (5-4, 0-1 District 3-AAA) was playing its first game in 32 days, and was without four starters because of illness and travel issues related to this week’s winter weather. The Flashes lost another key player when starting goal keeper Chuck Beamish was injured early in the first half in a collision with Ezell.

“I had five seventh-graders out there,” an exasperated Mathis said.

Backup keeper Jake Brister finished with 10 saves and kept the Flashes in the game for a while, but soon succumbed to a second-half onslaught by Central Hinds.

After taking a 1-0 lead into halftime — Ezell scored on a breakaway five minutes into the game ­— the Cougars picked up two goals in the first nine minutes of the second half and had another shot hit the crossbar. Richburg scored off an assist from Ezell in the 44th minute, and Davis McDade knocked the ball in following a scrum in front of the net in the 49th.

Jance Riley got a goal in the 53rd minute, and then Gabe Carr and Ezell scored 30 seconds apart in the 60th minute to make it 6-0. Carr scored on a free kick from 40 yards away, and Ezell’s goal went into the net after deflecting off of Brister’s hands.

Richburg netted another goal and Tyler Birdwell scored in the 72nd minute to round out the scoring.
Central Hinds outshot St. Al 23-8 in the game, and 15-2 in the second half. Five of the Cougars goals came on shots taken inside the 6-yard line.

“We hadn’t played, and we were standing back. They’ve got some good kids with skills, but we have a lot of fast kids and some bigger kids and they went to the ball and smothered them. We were slow to go that first half,” Central Hinds coach Dave Riley said.

The lopsided win all but assured Central Hinds (5-0) of the District 3-AAA championship. St. Al will need to win the rest of its district games, including its rematch with the Cougars in Vicksburg on Wednesday — and the Flashes would need to win that one by at least five goals to pull even on a tiebreaker.

St. Al will host Park Place Monday at 5 p.m. in its next outing.

This might also be just round one of the St. Al-Central Hinds saga for this season. The teams met three times last year, with the final showdown in the Class AAA semifinals, and a similar story could unfold this time.

The five-goal differential might be too much for St. Al to overcome for the district title, but Mathis was confident his team could give Central Hinds a better game at full strength.

“When I have all my players back and I’m healthy, I’m good. And then we’re at our place, which is a better field,” Mathis said.

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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