Winona Christian football coach Junior Graham was worried about how physical Marshall Academy was going to be.
Graham was right to be worried.
The Patriots ran up 386 yards of offense and used a dominant defense to take a 50-0 shutout win over the Stars on Friday night.
With the loss, Winona Christian falls to 2-6 on the season and will host North Delta this week.
For the majority of the season, Graham has seen his squad fight tooth and nail for every yard. But Graham was not pleased with the effort against the undefeated Patriots.
“This is the first time this year that I was disappointed with our effort,” Graham said. “I thought we had a chance to compete, but we don’t compete at all. We had some things go wrong that didn’t help us. We had some big drops early in the game that would have kept us on the field and that’s key for us being in a game. We have to execute and play perfect. The bottom line is they were more physical than us. They are big and they came right at us. It wasn’t our best effort by any means.”
The Patriots dominated the action early as they scored a pair of touchdowns on runs of 3 and 13 yards to lead 14-0 at the end of the first.
The Patriots poured it on in the second quarter with 24 points on runs of 4, 31 and 16 yards to lead 38-0 at the half.
With the clock running in the second half, Marshall added two more scores, the first being a 90-yard run in the third and the second being an 18-yard run in the fourth.
The Stars struggled on offense, managing only 103 yards of total offense with 73 rushing and 30 passing. Sam Thompson had 25 yards on eight carries and Lane Beckwith had 25 yards rushing on 11 carries. Collin Parkinson had 30 yards receiving on two catches. Ware was 2-of-11 passing for the Stars. Bryce Harville led the Stars with nine tackles.
“They didn’t lose anything from last year and I thought they were really good in the box last year,” Graham said. “They weren’t a very good matchup for us. They were a very physical team and we are more of a finesse team. They are solid and well rounded.”
This week’s game
The schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Stars as they take on Class 4A North Delta.
North Delta is 2-6 on the season with a 42-0 win over Rossville and a 29-7 win over Oak Hill to their credit. They have losses to Pillow (37-8), Kirk (7-0), Bayou (28-0), Marshall (14-7), Greenville St. Joseph (30-2) and Indianola (27-20).
“We are playing another phsyical team this week in North Delta,” Graham said. “They are big and physical up front. They play a lot of zero man and nobody has really had a lot of success running the football at them. They make you throw a lot of low percentage stuff, lots of one on one stuff. Being real physical is a bad combination for us. We have a lot of finesse guys. But that’s the schedule we were handled.”
