IHSAA football What We Learned Week 1: Mixed results vs. Ohio powers, surprises and more

I arrived Saturday morning at Tom Benson Stadium in Canton, Ohio, about 10 minutes before kickoff between Center Grove and Ohio powerhouse St. Edward. I parked my car, walked to around to where I thought the media gate was located and was told to keep going to the other corner of the stadium.

I kept going, watched through the gates as Center Grove kicked off, and kept walking — all the way to where I started, about 100 yards from where I parked my car. I didn’t miss anything, luckily, and I got a couple extra thousand steps in. Not all bad.

Maybe a sign, too, that sometimes the journey from point A to point B is about the exploration. Or maybe I just can’t read directions. Center Grove’s start here, five hours from home in Canton, Ohio, where a physically massive, two-time defending Division I state champion St. Edward team controlled the afternoon for a 27-10 win over the Trojans, is just point A.

How Center Grove built a dynasty: Talent, hard work and start 'em young

IHSAA football Week 1 roundup: Scores, highlights, statistics

The end goal for the three-time defending 6A champions, Lucas Oil Stadium, is still just 13 miles away. Sometimes you just have to take the long way to get there. A few more thoughts on Center Grove’s opener, followed by more on what we learned from the season-opening weekend:

>> Center Grove coach Eric Moore was not at all disappointed with his team’s defense. The Trojans were not burned by the big play outside of a 53-yard pass from Davidson recruit Casey Bullock to Zach Hackleman to set up St. Edward’s second touchdown. But Center Grove also intercepted Bullock twice in the first half (by Michael Soderdahl and Luke Barrett) and Bullock finished 10-for-16 for 130 yards.

But with two Ohio State recruits and one Michigan recruit starting on a massive offensive line, St. Edward leaned on the smaller Trojans for 146 rushing yards and chewed up clock in the second half. Still, not terrible.

“We tackled well,” Moore said. “We give up a little bit because of their pure size and strength. The mismatches were there and you can’t control X’s and O’s when their X’s are better than your O’s sometimes. That happens. But we fought for it and this is a great learning tape.”

>> It was more of a struggle for the Center Grove offense, which missed on a golden opportunity after St. Edward had jumped out to a 7-0 lead. Quarterback Tyler Cherry found Noah Coy for a 40-yard gain to put Center Grove in position to tie the score early. But on a 4th-and-1 play, St. Edward stuffed a left-side run. The Eagles then went 92 yards to take a 14-0 lead.

The other missed opportunity came after St. Edward muffed a punt at the Eagles’ 14-yard line. Center Grove settled for a 30-yard field goal to cut the lead to 14-3 midway through the second quarter, but needed a touchdown in that spot.

Cherry finished 17-for-23 for 144 yards and one interception, but was under constant pressure. Loghan Thomas, a slender 6-4 defensive end and Notre Dame recruit, was a constant menace. St. Edward’s defense was everywhere. A well-coached, sure-tackling machine.

“On offense, we’ve got to get better at a lot of things,” Moore said. “A lot of little bitty things that hurt you in the first game that sometimes you can get away with, they canceled out. We have to step up our level these first five weeks with the opponents we’re going to play.”

>> Center Grove did get on the board late in the fourth quarter on 23-yard touchdown run by senior Rylan Cook, who led the Trojans with 48 rushing yards on nine carries. Senior Matthew Yoder added 37 yards on six carries. But until the final drive, the running game struggled. Against a defense like St. Edward, becoming a one-dimensional passing team is not ideal.

“Some heads went down, but we have to pick each other up and get back into the flow of things," Cherry said. "I think no matter who we are going to play, from the best team in the country to whoever we’re going to play, we have to have that grit and toughness. We have to have that mindset to keep supporting each other. If we do that, I think we’re going to be fine the rest of the year.”

There is no time to sit around and worry about what happened in Canton against the nation’s No. 13-ranked team. Oakland, the three-time defending 6A champion out of Tennessee and ranked No. 31 in the country in the High School Football America 100, is making the trip Friday to Johnson County.

More from Week 1 …

Ben Davis notches a statement win

Ben Davis went on the road and smashed Cincinnati Moeller 49-28 in one of the impressive scores from Friday night and Russ Mann’s first win as coach.

Michigan recruit Jordan Marshall ran for a 75-yard touchdown on Moeller's first play from scrimmage and had four touchdowns, but Ben Davis lit up the scoreboard with 34 first-half points against a Moeller team that went 13-2 last year and reached the Ohio Division I state semifinals.

Mark Zackery caught a 67-yard touchdown pass and returned a fumble 99 yards for another score, Thomas Gotkowski passed for 283 yards and three TDs and Alijah Price ran for 135 yards on 22 carries. That’s a recipe for success.

I would expect Ben Davis to get some support for a No. 1 ranking in Class 6A this week. The Giants, who host Avon this week, provided some bragging rights for Indiana high school football. Moeller was ranked No. 54 nationally.

Five surprises

Five results that surprised me from Friday night:

>> I expected the Westfield-New Palestine game to be a coin flip type of battle. It was not. Westfield, ranked No. 6 in 6A, led 31-0 after three quarters to avenge last year’s season-opening loss to the Dragons in a dominating performance. The Shamrocks travel this Friday to Lawrence Central, which dominated Tech 54-0.

More Westfield: Jackson Gilbert waited for this moment. He made coach — and his dad — proud.

>> Fort Wayne Snider made the trip down I-69 and defeated Warren Central, 42-20. Snider is a good team, ranked second in 5A, but I expected the 6A fifth-ranked Warriors to be ready. Snider quarterback Ke’ron Billingsley made big plays and running back Uriah Buchanan ran for 174 yards on 26 carries. It doesn’t get any easier for Warren Central, which makes the trip up I-69 this week to play Carroll, last year’s 6A runner-up.

FW Snider handles Warren Central: 'They should celebrate all the way home.'

>> Pendleton Heights blanked Lebanon 15-0, a reversal of last year’s 26-12 loss to the Tigers. I expected Lebanon to build off last year’s 6-4 season, but breaking in a new quarterback is tough. Pendleton Heights intercepted three passes and held Lebanon to 173 yards of offense. The Arabians have a chance to take a 3-0 record into the Greenfield-Central game with Anderson and New Castle up next.

>> Class 5A No. 9 Decatur Central’s 18-14 win over Columbus North was not necessarily a surprise, but the way it happened was a stunner for both sides. The Hawks erased an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit, scoring two touchdowns in the final 2:32. Quarterback Bo Polston’s 1-yard touchdown run with 6 seconds left provided the winning score. The Hawks next host New Palestine, a 49-0 winner in last year’s meeting.

>> Class 4A No. 9 Mooresville rallied late but lost 34-29 to Bloomington North. Good start for Hogan Denny, though. The Pioneers’ quarterback passed for 181 yards and a touchdown and ran 20 times for 180 yards and two scores. I think Bloomington North is going to have a good season.

Three top-10 6A teams lost (No. 1 Center Grove, No. 5 Carroll and No. 6 Warren Central). Another No. 1 to fall was defending 5A champion Valparaiso, which lost 38-21 to Penn.

HSE-Carroll gamebreaker

I guess the old saying is "there a few plays that determine the outcome of football game." Something like that. But it is pretty rare you can pinpoint one playing swinging the momentum of a game so clearly as Mason Alexander’s 69-yard interception return for a touchdown in 6A fourth-ranked Hamilton Southeastern’s 28-14 win over No. 5 Carroll.

Carroll trailed 14-7 in the third quarter but scored on its first possession of the second half and was moving the ball again when Jimmy Sullivan’s pass was picked off by Alexander, who turned on the jets and scored on his second interception return of the game.

Alexander, a junior cornerback, is a serious talent with offers from Auburn, Florida, Indiana, Ole Miss, Pitt, Purdue and Wisconsin, among others. Love his confidence, too. When two relatively evenly-matched teams square off, it is players like Alexander who can flip the game in a hurry.

I like Carroll’s team. Don’t be surprised if these teams match up again in the semistate.

A Noblesville record-setter

One of the cool things about our Super Team photo shoots each year (for me anyway) is to get a chance to talk to many of our area’s top players. Not even in interviews, though that is fun, too, but just talking. Noblesville’s Logan Shoffner is one of those I enjoyed getting to chat with this summer.

Shoffner etched his name atop the Noblesville record board for career rushing yards with a 232-yard performance (on just 13 carries) in a 48-30 win over Mt. Vernon in the nightcap of the Horseshoe Classic at Lucas Oil Stadium. It pushed Shoffner past Paul Height on the career rushing list, a mark that stood for 41 years.

Shoffner and Noblesville return home to play Homestead this week, then host Fishers in a huge Hoosier Crossroads Conference game in Week 3.

Looking ahead …

There are a lot of Week 2 goodies ahead, including Cathedral at Brownsburg, Roncalli at Franklin Central, Kokomo at Whiteland, Westfield at Lawrence Central and more. We’ll have plenty of coverage Friday and during the week leading up to the games. Get ready for a hot week that feels more like August. Appreciate you following along.

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana high school football: Center Grove, Ben Davis split in Ohio