Flashes looking for answers after another bad loss

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, September 16, 2003

[9/16/03]St. Aloysius was hoping to bounce back from an embarrassing 26-6 loss to St. Andrew’s with a win in its regional opener Friday night against Mount Olive.

What the Flashes (1-2, 0-1 Region 4-1A) got was an even worse defeat in a 46-18 blowout.

Now coach Jim Taylor is left scratching his head as he tries to figure out how to patch up a sinking ship that keeps springing more leaks.

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“They seem to be more focused on other things than football,” Taylor said after the game. “I don’t know what the deal is.”

Taylor has tried different methods from harsh practices to light practices in an attempt to get his players to respond, but it hasn’t seemed to work so far.

The Flashes looked confused and passive as Mount Olive pounded the football down their throats to the tune of 324 yards, led by Earl McLaurin’s 279 yards and four touchdowns on 35 carries.

St. Al quarterback Drew Mazzanti said the team came out with no intensity for the second straight week, and it showed in the game’s opening quarters.

“In the first half, we’re flat,” Mazzanti said. “Second half, we’re all pumped up trying to get back in the game, and it’s just too late.”

Mount Olive dominated the line of scrimmage from the start.

On their opening drive, the Pirates ran seven consecutive dive plays right up the middle with McLaurin and picked up 45 yards on the St. Al defense.

“They blocked us off the line of scrimmage. We didn’t show much fortitude,” Taylor said.

The Flashes also had trouble bringing down McLaurin. He seemed to be covered in butter as St. Al defenders bounced away and slipped off him time after time.

With 1:56 left in the first quarter, McLaurin juked St. Al defenders four times on his way to a 14-yard touchdown run for a 14-6 Mount Olive lead.

Near the end of the second quarter, he crashed a wave of moves upon the Flashes including a juke, a pair of spins, a stiff arm and two broken tackles. McLaurin was finally brought down 37 yards later inside the 10, setting up the Pirates for their fourth touchdown of the first half.

What’s even more disturbing for Taylor and his staff is that most of Mount Olive’s plays were sniffed out by defensive coordinator Jimmy Salmon and the Flashes still couldn’t stop them.

“We scouted them well and knew their tendencies,” Taylor said. “We tried to have a gameplan that would handle that. But when you just don’t do the fundamentals of football, I don’t care what you line up in.”

The offense didn’t fare any better in the first half.

While they did run for 102 first-half yards, the Flashes also coughed up the ball five times, losing two.

Much like the line on defense, the St. Al offensive line was pushed back for most of the game, creating few holes for tailback Rob Jones.

“We just haven’t executed in any phase of the game. We don’t block, we don’t run, we don’t tackle,” Taylor said.

Taylor said Mount Olive should not have been able to push his team around so handily.

“I thought they were just really bigger than we are, but when we walked out there and shook hands, they weren’t any bigger than we were,” he said. “There were a lot of kids the same size we were.”

On Friday, the Flashes square off with 0-2 Stringer.