Heat, Subiaco roster overwhelm Decatur

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

— The Decatur Bulldogs lost 49-15 to the Subiaco Academy Trojans during a nonconference game Friday night in Subiaco.

Subiaco Academy is a private Catholic schoolfor boys in the 4-4A conference.

The Trojans were the first to score during Friday’s game, Decatur athletic director John Unger said. The game was briefly tied after Bulldogs senior linebacker Sam Xiong caught the Trojan’s kickoff and turned it for a touchdown, but the Trojans made two more touchdowns during the first half of the game for a halftime score of 22-8, Unger said.

The Bulldogs started the second half with the ball in their possession and scored a secondtime, but the heat and humidity, following the rain from the remnants of Hurricane Isaac, took their toll on the team.

“We got the ball and scored to start the second half. Then we just ran out of gas,” Unger said.

Several of Decatur’skey players were out of the game with heat cramps, and the team didn’t have enoughsubs to keep up with Subiaco’s 50 players.

“We made a couple of mistakes on defense to let them score,” Unger said.

Senior quarterback Evan Owens played a good game on Friday and threw several good passes, Unger said. He also did a good job running the ball and made some big plays. Owens had two big catches in the second quarter during the scoring drive. Thefirst was a 30-yard screen pass and the other was a 30-yard deep pass, both from sophomore Victor Urquidi, Unger said.

Subiaco Academy played a very good game, Unger said.

“The team is a lot better than last year and has some great tailbacks, a good quarterback, good safety and good linebackers,” Unger said.

“They knew what we were trying to do and they stopped it,” he said.

The Bulldogs made too many mistakes and missed some assignments, Unger said. They also had four or five sophomores on defense who are not used to getting hit that hard, he said.

“We learned a lot, and we’re going to be a lot better this week,” Unger said.

The Bulldogs travel to face the Hartford Hustlers on Friday in their first conference game of the season. The junior high Bulldogs will face the Hustlers in a home game Thursday evening.

Sports, Pages 9 on 09/05/2012