Whiteland accomplished its mission to start fast on Friday night.
“Offensively at least, we showed that,” senior quarterback Kevin Denham said. “Every drive in the first half we scored. We were running the ball hard.”
The Class 5A No. 3 Warriors scored in the first minute and a half on 57-yard TD run by Maalik Perkins en route to a 45-14 rout of Plainfield in Mid-State Conference action. The Warriors’ (7-1, 5-1) are alone atop the league standings after Mooresville topped Martinsville. Whiteland closes the regular season at home against Greenwood next week.
“Maalik is quick; it was good to see him get in the open field,” Denham said. “After that, it was (mostly) four yards a play, ground and pound. Our line did a great job.”
Senior running back Peyton Emberton scored two touchdowns in the first half as the Warriors built a 28-14 lead.
Denham threw a 27-yard TD pass to senior tight end Cameron Cooper and also scored on a 1-yard TD run as the Warriors shut out Plainfield (3-5, 3-3) 17-0 in the second half. The other score came on a 31-yard field goal by David Mathis.
“We made some adjustments at halftime, but the most important thing is our defense said we’re not going to let them score any more,” Warriors coach Darrin Fisher said. “We’re a really good defense when we play with emotion and play hard. That’s what they did in the second half.”
After Perkins’ big run with 10:32 left in the first quarter, Emberton boosted the lead to 14-0 with a 5-yard TD run with 2:01 to go.
“We did talk about starting fast and setting the tone of the way we were going to play this football game,” Fisher said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better start.”
As usual, the Warriors used several running backs. Fisher credited unselfishness. Perkins finished with 90 yards on 10 carries and Emberton had 83 yards on 17 carries.
Plainfield’s Hunter Newell scored a 1-yard quarterback sneak with 9:20 remaining in the second quarter to cut the lead to 14-7. The Warriors pushed the lead to 21-7 on a 3-yard run by Jonathan Crowley with 5:31 left.
A 7-yard TD pass from Newell to Isaiah Miller on fourth down with 2:20 left in the half again cut the margin to seven. However, the Warriors quickly regained a 14-point edge with a 6-yard touchdown run by Emberton with 47.5 seconds left. Whiteland was able to take advantage of a short kickoff.
The Warriors didn’t have a turnover and weren’t called for a penalty until the second half.
“We call it unconscious competence,” Fisher said. “Our scheme is not incredibly complicated, but it’s a matter of being brilliant at the basics. We practice the same fundamentals over and over again; you get to where you can do it unconsciously. You just play hard. We try to get to October and play as fast as humanly possible, and we played fast tonight. Our quarterback did a fantastic job of getting us in and out of the right formations and shifts. It was as good of an offensive game as we’ve had in a while.”
