Lewiston stuffs Post Falls
MARK NELKE | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 years, 3 months AGO
<p>JAKE PARRISH/Press Post Falls' Quin Bennett guards the ball as Lewiston's Kahner Hutchens sights him up in the backfield Friday night at Post Falls High School.</p>
Mark Nelke covers high school and North Idaho College sports, University of Idaho football and other local/regional sports as a writer, photographer, paginator and editor at the Coeur d’Alene Press. He has been at The Press since 1998 and sports editor since 2002. Before that, Mark was the one-man sports staff for 16 years at the Bonner County Daily Bee in Sandpoint. Earlier, he was sports editor for student newspapers at Spokane Falls Community College and Eastern Washington University. Mark enjoys the NCAA men's basketball tournament and wiener dogs — and not necessarily in that order. | October 15, 2016 9:30 PM
Bengals control Trojan ground game in 45-13 victory
POST FALLS — Once the Post Falls Trojans had difficulty running the football, their options became rather limited against the second-ranked Lewiston Bengals.
Post Falls managed just 2.7 yards per rush — 114 yards on 42 carries — and Lewiston wrapped the top seed to the state playoffs from the 5A Inland Empire League with a 45-13 victory over Trojans on Friday night at Trojan Stadium.
“Their defense is to stop that inside run, and so we probably should have gone to that perimeter game a little earlier,” Post Falls interim coach Blaine Bennett said.
Colton Richardson threw six touchdown passes and showed some nimbleness afoot for Lewiston (8-0, 2-0 5A IEL), which earned a first-round bye and will play host to a state quarterfinal game the weekend of Nov. 4-5.
Post Falls (6-2, 1-1) plays host to Coeur d’Alene (4-3, 1-1) next Friday, with the winner earning the second berth to the playoffs. The loser could still be in the mix for a wild-card playoff berth.
Post Falls tried to mix up its pressures on Richardson, and several times chased him out of the pocket. But the 6-foot-5, 225-pound Richardson, who dropped some 25 pounds from last season, managed to escape several times and had five scrambles of 9 or more yards.
“I tell you what, I thought they had a great defensive game plan against us,” Lewiston coach Shawn Nilsson said. “And they got a lot of heat on Colt; there’s definitely things we need to fix up front, because they probably put as much pressure on us as we’ve had all year. That wasn’t our best performance up front, offensive line-wise.”
Post Falls sacked Richardson three times and forced a fumble on one of those, but he still threw for 317 yards on a blustery night, completing 26 of 44 passes. Alex Light had 10 catches for 129 yards and four touchdowns, and Riley Way caught 10 for 125 and two scores, and the Bengals kept it simple with mostly shorter passes.
“When you have a good quarterback like that, you need to mix it up,” Bennett said. “I thought we did a good job with that ... we missed some tackles, but good players make you look bad sometimes.”
Post Falls pulled within 7-6 in the first quarter after a Lewiston punt into the wind took a right turn and fluttered out of bounds at the Bengal 20 after traveling 3 yards. The Trojans scored four plays later when Matthew Mills ran 12 yards around left end on a jet sweep.
Another nice Trojan drive in the second quarter ended with a sack deep in Lewiston territory, and Post Falls dropped a could-be TD deep pass later in the half.
Aside from that, it was all Lewiston. The Bengals held Braden Vaughan, Post Falls’ top rusher, to just 46 yards on 17 carries, and tackled better than they did the previous week, when Coeur d’Alene shredded them for more than 300 yards on the ground.
“That was our focus, to shut down the run and try to make them a little more one-dimensional,” Nilsson said.
The wind affected some passes, but really caused havoc with the kicking game. In addition to the aforementioned 3-yard punt in one direction against the win, and Nate Buer of Post Falls unloaded a 70-yarder with the wind at his back.
Lewiston plays host to Lake City (3-5, 0-2) next Friday.
Lewiston 14 14 14 3 — 45
Post Falls 6 0 0 7 — 13
First quarter
Lew — Alex Light 13 pass from Colton Richardson (Lane Grant kick), 9:48
PF — Matthew Mills 12 run (run failed), 4:50
Lew — Light 10 pass from Richardson (Grant kick), :37
Second quarter
Lew — Riley Way 16 pass from Richardson (Grant kick), 10:15
Lew — Light 13 pass from Richardson (Grant kick), 2:19
Third quarter
Lew — Way 4 pass from Richardson (Grant kick), 8:32
Lew — Light 5 pass from Richardson (Grant kick), 1:07
Fourth quarter
Lew — FG Grant 20, 6:39
PF — Nate Buer 4 run (Braden Vaughan kick), :53.8
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING — Lew, Richardson 11-54, Fletcher 4-11, Way 1-4, Light 3-3, Speer 2-7, Kinzer 3-4, Spencer 1-2, Jacobs 1-4. PF, Vaughan 17-46, Buer 11-2, Gering 2-1, Ma. Mills 1-12, Bennett 10-46, Barber 1-7.
PASSING — Lew, Richardson 26-44-0-317. PF, Buer 6-16-1-76.
RECEIVING — Lew, Light 10-129, Way 10-125, Hayes 2-18, Ahlers 3-42, Grant 1-16. PF, Gering 4-49, Barber 1-13, Bennett 1-14.
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“The whole process has been completely amazing,” said Nathan Williams, now in his fourth season as the Badgers boys basketball coach. “And the parents … it’s an hour and a half to Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, when we’d play an AAU game, and an hour and a half back, and there were so many times there was 6, 8 inches of snow. And we’ve got a game at 8 a.m. They’d always schedule us at 8 a.m., coming from Bonners. So we’re waking up at 5 … it was crazy. But the commitment from the parents and the kids has been amazing.”