Chris Stevenson takes over from Don Brennan to cover the Sooners game for the Ottawa Sun. This article was posted only about a half hour ago.
I could be wrong, but I could swear that there were four interceptions in the game by the Sooners, but Stevenson states that there were three. Either way, you get the idea.
Sooners coach Andy McEvoy wasn’t sure what to expect with the team’s return to the Ontario Football Conference after an absence of 13 years.
It didn’t take him long to get his answer.
The Sooners, who made the move back this year to the OFC from the weaker Quebec Junior Football League, jumped out to an early lead and cruised to a 41-14 win over the Hamilton Hurricanes at Carleton University’s Keith Harris Stadium last night.
“Not being in the conference, it was hard to tell how good the other teams would be. (Hamilton) had the coach of the year and their quarterback was the rookie of the year. We knew we had to play our best to have a chance. Give our kids credit,” said McEvoy.
The Sooners got three touchdowns from receiver Curtis Cates as they opened up a 27-0 halftime lead and pushed their lead to 34-0 in the third quarter on Cates’ last touchdown.
“I had a pretty good first half and I felt good,” said Cates, who caught touchdown passes from quarterback Zach White of 14 and 10 yards by the time the game was 12 minutes old to stake the Sooners to a 13-0 lead. “You have to give a lot of credit to the quarterback. He made some good reads and was good on his feet.”
The Sooners, who won four national titles their last time around in the OFC, didn’t take long after their return to the OFC to take the lead. On their second possession, White moved the Sooners briskly from their own 46 to the Hamilton 14, the big play being a 36-yard pass-and-run play to Cates up the right sideline.
Two plays later, with White scrambling, Cates helped him by coming back to the ball and shouting that he was open. White hit him with the pass near the goal line on the right sideline and Cates had the Sooners’ first touchdown in their return to the OFC seven minutes into the game. The convert attempt by Javier Alonzo was blocked.
After the defence forced the Hurricanes to punt, the Sooners made it 13-0 when White hit Cates again, this time with a 10-yard touchdown pass at 11:49 of the first quarter. The big play in that drive was a 50-yard pass-and run play from White to Matt Bertrand in a second-and-15 from the Ottawa 30.
White picked up his third touchdown pass of the first half a minute into the second quarter when he found running back Sean Murphy just over the goal line with a one-yard toss, and Alfonzo’s convert made it 20-0.
The Sooners’ defence really took over at that point, picking off Hamilton quarterback Brian Echlin three times, with Ottawa’s Mo Ngau returning one pick from deep inside the Ottawa end, zigzagging across the field to make it 27-0.
Hamilton closed out the scoring on what might have been the most spectacular play of the night, a return of a missed Ottawa field goal attempt of about 125 yards for a touchdown by the Hurricanes’ Deshone Davis. Davis took the ball almost at the back of the Hamilton end zone, got a couple of huge blocks around the Hamilton five-yard line and then picked his way down the right sideline for the score on the last play of the third quarter.
The Sooners are in Burlington next Saturday.
3 Comments
You are right. There was a 4th interception in that game.
Corey Armstrong, a rookie safety ….and my
best friend’s nephew BTW…picked off an errant pass and returned to the house for an apparent TD.
Unfortunately, a roughing the passer call nullified a great play.
Maybe that’s what’s throwing me off, since it didn’t count but it was still memorable.
Poor guy had another one hit him in the hands, too! That appears to be one hell of a linebacking group.
I’m not sure about that call. The refs would have had to determine that the late hit was in the time between the ball left the QB’s hands and reached Armstrong. That isn’t a whole lot of time for someone to pull back from popping someone, unless they feel the defender took a cheap shot while the QB was on the turf.
Continuing on the topic of officiating…I watched the game live and again on Rogers, having taped it and fast forwarding to the significant plays in the game.
On the Mo Ngau interception return, the Sooners were flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct, supposedly for “excessive celebration”
Having watched that play several times over again on tape.
I couldn’t see anything that IMO, could be construed as excessive celebration apart from the fact Mo dived head first into the end zone after scoring.
If THAT warrants an unsportsman like conduct penalty, then give me a friggin’ break.
They should call the OFC the Old Foggies Conference!
Seriously, the game is played for the kids.
The fans pay to watch them play good football, not to watch a bunch of 45-50 year refs over officiate the game and thereby ruin it.
What Ngau did was not taunting, hardly took more than a moment and was completely spontaneous and not premeditated…like the Calgary Stampeders receievers and their silly “bobsled” routine.
Now I realize officiating is a tough job but really that call in that situation was completely needless.
God only knows we see enough flags during the course of a typical junior football game, and while most are warranted, in some cases I think the officials should “lighten up” a little bit.
This wasn’t a case of unsportsmanlike conduct, this was just a kid who made a great play and was enjoying himself, that’s all.
Let’s leave it at that, shall we?