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Tigers hold their own at Carthage jamboree
CARTHAGE — For a football team that is not expected to throw the ball very much this season, Nevada High School sure slung the pigskin effectively in its debut Friday night at the Carthage jamboree.
The Tigers found the end zone on just their second play against Carl Junction, when junior quarterback Cade Beshore connected with junior wideout Drew Beachler on a 25-yard touchdown pass.
Later, in an offensive series against the host Tigers, Beshore dumped a short throw to Logan Marquardt and watched the senior running back evade defenders for a 22-yard score.
Nevada passed the ball just seven times out of 36 opportunities (18 against Carl Junction, 18 against Carthage), but that ratio might change in the regular season if the Tigers can cash them in as regularly as they did last night.
“The passing game looks good. Our quarterback’s reading coverages well, so we feel pretty good about it,” said NHS head coach Wes Beachler, whose squad outscored Carl Junction two TDs to one and Carthage 4-2 (though no one was keeping official score). “That’s what we want. When people load the box, we want to pop a few over the top and have big plays like that. If he continues to read coverages like that, we’ll get up in that 10 to 13 throws a game range. We’ll have to keep evaluating that.”
Nevada’s run game did its part too, adding four scores on the ground.
Sophomore Brice Budd took in a reverse from 14 yards out against the Bulldogs, before junior running back Case Sanderson barreled his way into the end zone against Carthage from the 22-yard-line. That was immediately followed by a 40-yard run by senior Eli Cheaney, who squirted through a hole on the right side of the line of scrimmage and waited on a lead block downfield by sophomore Tyler Longobardi to pave the way to pay dirt. Sanderson scored his second touchdown of the night a few plays later on a 10-yard keeper.
Though Nevada’s dress rehearsal wasn’t without its faults (more on those in a bit), just about every player on the team left the field feeling great about next week’s season opener against Logan-Rogersville.
“That was awesome. These guys are good, so it just shows the team that we’re just as good as these guys, and we can go far,” senior lineman Logan Smith said. “We’re just excited to show everybody what we can do.”
Beshore agreed.
“We’re feeling good. We’re playing good. Hopefully we just keep it rolling,” he said. “Our O-line did amazing, like usual.”
Marquardt added that the team’s play should give Nevada the confidence it needs to compete with last year’s Big 8 East champion, Logan-Rogersville, a team it beat in 2020.
“We’re ready for them to come to Nevada and kick their butts,” Marquardt said. “We felt like we did really good as a team. We were really physical. We felt like we put it to some pretty big schools and played with them. We came out hitting pretty hard. We’ve been putting in the work, and I think we’re going to have a really good season.”
For the coaching staff, there are still a few aspects of the game the Tigers will need to work on if they hope to duplicate those results when it counts — especially once they get a closer look at the scrimmage film over the weekend.
Beachler noted his offensive linemen could do a better job of getting at pad level and the cornerbacks could offer more run support. Other than that, he liked what he saw.
“I was very impressed, very pleased. Really pleased defensively. These are two fast, athletic teams. I thought we held them in check pretty well,” said Beachler, whose D held the Bulldogs’ hurry-up offense out of the end zone until their 12th play, then saw some younger players sub in and hold their own against Carthage. “The thing I was most pleased with — and Coach (Neil) Barnes may disagree on the defensive side — was our offensive line. We played a lot of young guys a lot more snaps than they were expecting, because of injury, and they played well.”