Cardinal Mooney runs past Southeast

An exclamation point punctuated Tristan Hillerich’s 18th birthday on Saturday.

The Cardinal Mooney senior quarterback and Cougars head coach Drew Lascari saw something from Southeast’s defense that they could exploit.

Having talented running back Bryce Williams already rack up several yards earlier in the game helped free up an area for Hillerich to run toward. So, after faking a handoff to Williams and seeing the Seminoles (2-3) bite on the play, Hillerich ran the other way and galloped 70 yards to the end zone to cap the Cougars’ 28-7 homecoming victory against the visiting Seminoles (2-3).

“We feel we’ve got a great one-two punch with Tristan and Bryce,” Lascari said. “I felt like their defense was making a heavy emphasis on attacking Bryce at the point of attack, so we felt if we ran that play we could get them to bite and run the quarterback counter weakside and it worked.”

But before counter run plays happened, Cardinal Mooney (5-1) began the non-district game, which was moved to Saturday following Manatee County schools closing with Hurricane Matthew threatening Florida, throwing the ball.

Lascari said Southeast’s front seven is as talented as he’s seen. So he needed to try slowing down the Noles (2-3) from racking up sacks all game. That meant utilizing some screen passes and draws to open the rest of the running game.

Consequently, the Williams and Hillerich combo took over. Williams cranked out a 70-yard rumble to give Mooney a 7-0 lead. He finished with a game-high 151 rushing yards on 24 carries and two touchdowns. Hillerich added two touchdowns among his 13 carries for 87 yards.

“We were trying to get pushes, but we were relying on the cutback counter plays,” Hillerich said. “So we’d get them to flow and then beat them outside.”

Meanwhile, Mooney’s defense stymied Southeast’s offense. Both the Cougars’ secondary and front seven forced quick offensive series for Southeast in the first half. They produced a fumble recovery, and the special teams came up big, too. That unit blocked a field goal to give Mooney a 14-0 halftime lead. Then Southeast fumbled the second half’s opening kickoff with Mooney recovering.

Southeast quarterback Alex Taylor found Qion Burch for a 47-yard touchdown reception off a broken play later in the third quarter, before Williams delivered a dagger. He ran up the middle, bounced outside and outran Southeast’s defense for a 32-yard run that allowed Mooney to rebuild its lead to two scores.

“That was huge,” Hillerich said. “We went down in a 5-minute drive and scored. That was huge.”

Mooney’s defense held Southeast to 250 yards of offense, while the Cougars ran for 236 yards.

“I saw the score, which means we didn’t play very well,” said Southeast head coach Rashad West, who arrived for the last five minutes after attending his grandmother’s funeral on Saturday. “I know that part. I don’t know why. I’ll get a chance to watch it. We just got to be better.”

Southeast, which couldn’t practice Thursday or Friday with the county closing schools down, returns to Class 5A-District 11 action against Englewood Lemon Bay next week.

“We’ve got Lemon Bay next week,” West said. “Hopefully, this will light the fire in some of our kids, and we’ll be ready to come out and work this week.”

This story was originally published October 8, 2016 at 6:28 PM with the headline "Cardinal Mooney runs past Southeast."