IMG Academy wears down Carol City with depth in preseason classic

Marcel Williams stood in the end zone at IMG Academy Field with his hands on his hips while the clock ticked toward zero in Bradenton.

Three of the last four plays for Miami Gardens Carol City ended with the quarterback planted in the turf around his own team’s end zone. After going toe to toe with IMG Academy for three-and-a-half quarters, the Chiefs had run out of gas.

On Carol City’s penultimate drive, Williams was sacked twice and the Chiefs lost 19 yards before punting. On Carol City’s final drive, Williams took one sack and the Chiefs lost eight yards before time expired. and IMG wrapped up a 17-7 win in Saturday’s preseason classic.

“They were rolling guys in and out,” Carol City head coach Aubrey Hill said. “And those guys were very athletic. Hats off to IMG. They’ve got some really, really good players.”

The Ascenders victory at IMG Academy was seldom smooth, but the Ascenders’ depth of talent eventually wore down another of Florida’s best teams.

IMG entered halftime trailing 7-0 after totaling 74 yards of offense. During the same period of time, the Ascenders committed 82 yards worth of penalties.

“There was a lot of penalties by both teams the first half,” IMG head coach Kevin Wright said. “We had the ball three times inside the 35 in the first quarter and came away with no points. You score there it’s probably a different game.”

On their first drive of the second half, the Ascenders capitalized. They began at the Cheifs’ 39-yard line and charged into the red zone in four plays. Their first red-zone attempt of the second half was a handoff to running back Asa Martin, who plowed through a Carol City defender at the goal line for a 13-yard, game-tying touchdown.

The next drive also began near midfield and IMG was inside the red zone in three plays before stalling. Still, Cooper Graham knocked in a 28-yard field goal to give the Ascenders the lead for good.

“The whole idea when you get a defensive struggle like that is just find some opportunities to knock the ball in,” Wright said, “and we were able to do that.”

IMG never clicked on offense for an extended period of time, but kept the Chiefs’ offense even more limited during the second half. Carol City finished the second half with 26 yards of offense and 24 came during one fourth-quarter drive on which the Chiefs ditched their quarterback and let running back Nay’quan Wright run out of a wildcat formation.

“We have that package,” Hill said. “We always know as a change of pace we can always get to it, and we felt we could run the ball a little, and we were able to do some things, but at the end of the day they were still big enough, strong enough, fast enough to do well enough to have success overall.”

A 5-yard loss on a second-down play in IMG territory ended Carol City’s experiment and gave the Ascenders the ball at their 21.

For one possession, IMG coalesced offensively. Martin gashed Carol City for 26 yards on two carries. Wide receiver Emmanuel Greene took a swing pass for 40 yards. To cap the drive and seal the victory, quarterback Kellen Mond floated a fade to Jhamon Ausbon in the left corner of the end zone. The wide receiver skied above the Cheifs’ secondary, a unit with three Division I prospects, to pluck the ball out of the air and stretch the Ascenders’ lead to 17-7.

“They brought a lot of pressure,” Wright said. “I thought it was a little bit of first-game jitters.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 11:46 PM with the headline "IMG Academy wears down Carol City with depth in preseason classic."