RIDGELAND – St. Aloysius moved up and down the field Friday night with a thunderous ground attack, piling up yards and chewing up clock.

It was no match for Bradford Blackmon, Conway Craig and St. Andrew’s lightning-fast offensive attack.

Blackmon scored four touchdowns – on a run, a pass reception, a fumble return and a kickoff return – and Craig threw two touchdown passes in the first half as St. Andrew’s beat St. Al 56-21. Seven different Saints scored touchdowns in the game.

“It was a lot of fun,” said Blackmon, who ran for just 46 yards on nine carries. “They started double-teaming me when I was out at receiver, and that just opened up a lot of space for everybody else. I don’t know when teams are going to learn we’re not a one-man team. We’ve got offensive weapons everywhere.”

St. Al’s Alex Halinski ran for 147 yards and a touchdown on 24 carries, and the Flashes piled up 266 yards on the ground. They kept the ball for nearly 19 minutes in the first half, but managed to score only seven points and made a series of blunders that allowed St. Andrew’s to blow the game open.

St. Andrew’s turned a blocked punt, a fumble, and a lucky break at the end of the second quarter into a 28-7 halftime lead. In the second half, the Saints scored after two bad punt snaps gave them excellent field position, as well as on Blackmon’s 75-yard kickoff return.

“We did the same thing two weeks in a row, and that’s kill ourselves,” St. Al coach Jim Taylor said. “Defensively, we gave up big plays. Kicking teams, we’d score and they’d return it. Stuff like that. You can’t expect to win a ballgame if you can’t get any momentum going.”

After stalling on the game’s first possession, St. Al was forced to punt. Chip Donald’s kick was partially blocked and returned by the Saints’ Tye Menist to the St. Al 15-yard line. On the next play, Bradford ran untouched off the right side for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead.

St. Al moved the ball to midfield on its next possession before Halinski coughed it up. Bradford came up big again for the Saints, scooping it up and returning it 55 yards for a score to make it 14-0.

The St. Andrew’s offense ran only two plays in the first quarter – Blackmon’s touchdown run and the final play of the period.

That last play, a 5-yard run by Blackmon, did start the Saints on a long scoring drive. Craig capped the 10-play, 76-yard march with an 11-yard TD toss to Blackmon to make it 21-0 with 8:28 to go in the half.

“It seemed like they had the ball the whole game,” said Craig, who completed 4 of 6 passes for 55 yards and two touchdowns, and also ran for 40 yards. “They wouldn’t break any long plays, but they’d keep moving the ball and eating up clock. It seemed like we barely had the ball at all tonight.”

St. Al answered with an epic 17-play, 7-minute drive that culminated in Daniel Halinski’s 1-yard quarterback sneak for a touchdown with 54 seconds to play in the half.

But St. Andrew’s came back with another quick strike, going down the field in the last minute of the period for a deflating touchdown.

After William Mayfield returned the kickoff to the St. Al 44, Craig completed a pair of passes and got a key pass interference call to move the ball to the St. Al 7 with about 20 seconds to play. Two runs went nowhere, including one by Blackmon with 9 seconds to go and the Saints out of timeouts.

St. Andrew’s was called for holding on the play, stopping the clock with 2 seconds remaining.

The Saints lined up for a final play as the officials marked off the penalty, snapping the ball as soon as it was set, and scored on a 21-yard pass from Craig to Menist as time expired.

The score made it 28-7 at the break and ended thoughts of a St. Al comeback.

“We thought after the holding that the clock was just going to run out and we were going to go into the half,” Blackmon said. “That gave us a bigger lead going into the half and momentum coming at.”