The Savannah Christian public address announcer might have summed up the Raiders' football game with New Hampstead best Friday night on one of his calls at Pooler Stadium.
"The Raiders open up another big hole for Smalls," he said as the Savannah Christian senior took another carry up the middle for a first down.
There were a lot of those moments for host Savannah Christian and Smalls as the Raiders beat New Hampstead 35-7 in a highly anticipated non-region matchup at Pooler Stadium, the venue both teams call home.
Smalls rushed for 171 yards and three touchdowns on 32 carries, Kenry Wall broke loose for a 20-yard score and quarterback Blaise Thomas added a scoring run as the Raiders (2-0) racked up 240 yards on 45 carries to dominate the action.
"This one meant a lot to us," said Smalls, who recently committed to Charleston Southern. "New Hampstead is a good team and I grew up playing little league football with a lot of these guys. There was a lot of talk on Instagram, so we had to show up. Our offensive line puts in that work every day against the great defensive line we have, and that paid off."
Sophomore tackle Jordan Dillon is part of a talented line that includes junior JT Howell, freshman RJ Brown, center Luke Gunn and Davian Melton. That group also paved the way for 421 rushing yards in a win over Whitefield Academy last week.
"We like to pound the rock, so it's just about being physical and playing smash mouth football, that's the key for us," Dillon said.
New Hampstead (1-1) scored its touchdown on a quarterback sneak with by Erik Hockman with 42 seconds left in the game as reserves were in for both sides.
SCPS had five-star defensive lineman Elijah Griffin back in the fold, and the senior was a force along with sophomore Damion Guyton up front. The Raiders held a Phoenix squad that scored 56 points in a win over South Effingham last week to 27 yards rushing and 135 yards of total offense.
"We played good team defense tonight," Guyton said. "The key is we rely on each other to have everyone do their job and take care of their responsibility. We have to trust each other, and we did that tonight."
Coach Baker Woodward, in his seventh season, was proud of his squad, which reached the Class 3A state title game last season where the Raiders lost to Cedar Grove.
"Both these teams have Pooler Stadium as their home field, so our message to the kids this week was we wanted to show that this is our house," Woodward said. "New Hampstead is a very good football team, but we controlled the clock with our run game and for our defense to shut out that first-team offense ― that was impressive.
"I thought we were the more physical team tonight, and we took charge from the beginning and never let down."
Dennis Knight covers sports for the Savannah Morning News. Contact him at Dknight@savannahnow.com. Twitter: @DennisKnightSMN
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah Christian football's run game again dominates, this time vs. rival New Hampstead
Most Popular
Comments / 0