Perhaps it took longer than the home crowd would have liked, but once the first quarter gave way to the second, Edinburgh found its stride and rode it all the way to a 42-14 win over Cloverdale on Friday night.
The Lancers scored 35 consecutive points over the middle two quarters.
“We started out slow in the first quarter, and pushed on from there,” Edinburgh coach Tyler DeSpain said.
The two teams exchanged touchdowns on their second possessions of the game. Cloverdale (0-2) found the end zone first on a 21-yard pass from Tayt Jackson to Levi Hilton. The Lancers returned to a short field, set up by a 36-yard kick return from Connor Ramey, and Jarrett Turner found the end zone three plays later on a 27-yard run.
In the second quarter, the Lancers put 21 points on the board. Turner scored his second touchdown of the game, running in from 1 yard out, on a drive set up by a bad snap on a Cloverdale punt. Following Turner’s score, the Clovers ran a fake punt on fourth and 12 from their own 27, but were stopped short by the Lancers’ special teams. Ramey scored two plays later from 12 yards out, after a defensive pass interference penalty moved the Lancers into the red zone.
On the subsequent Cloverdale possession, Edinburgh’s Jackson Hartwell took an interception 21 yards for a score to make it 28-7 at the half.
The Lancers continued to pull away in the third quarter. On the first play from scrimmage, Edinburgh’s Braylon Bryant took a shovel pass from Caleb Murphy 51 yards for a touchdown. The Lancers’ defense returned to the field and forced its fourth takeaway of the night. Jared Myers grabbed his second interception of the game, making a leaping catch at the Edinburgh 17-yard line. Turner used runs of 27 and 18 yards on the drive put the Lancers in the red zone, then Edinburgh capped the drive with a 6-yard scoring pass from Murphy to Caleb Dewey with 4:55 remaining in the third quarter.
That was Edinburgh’s sixth and final touchdown of the night, putting the home team up 42-7 and initiating a running clock for the remainder of the game.
Cloverdale tacked on a score midway through the fourth quarter on a 1-yard pass from Jackson to McGuire Lee.
Turner paced the Edinburgh offense with 106 yards rushing on 10 carries. Murphy completed just six passes, but threw for two scores. Enrique Callejas led the Lancers special teams, converting all six of his PAT attempts and hitting two punts of 50 yards or more.
The Lancers, 2-0 in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1994, host South Decatur next Friday.
