DANVILLE – Running an up-tempo offense that borders on the hurry up at times isn’t something that can be learned overnight. It can take time, especially if someone hasn’t guided the offense as a quarterback before.
Having graduated a record-setting quarterback in Madden Patrick after last year, Danville came into this season with a few options under center, and sure enough, the Ironmen played multiple players at quarterback over the first four weeks of the season.
But the job may be Carter Raup’s after Friday. After getting off to a bit of a slow start, Raup guided the Ironmen offense to four touchdowns in five possessions from the end of the first half into the latter half of the fourth quarter – all while utilizing the same up-tempo offense that has guided the Ironmen to five straight district championships. That erased an early 10-0 deficit and gave Danville its second straight win, 28-17 over Milton.
“We were able to wear them down with the no huddle and Carter (Raup) is getting used to it where we can start running that again,” said Danville coach Carl Majer. “We still have some things to work on but this is only Carter’s fourth game at quarterback. He’s also playing safety but he’s a special player. This is the second full week that we had the same offensive line and that’s starting to come around. We’re starting to click a little bit, you can see it, we just have to put it all together for four quarters.”
Raup and the Ironmen were able to overcome a 204-yard performance on the ground by Milton’s Montgomery Fisher, who was responsible for nearly all of the Black Panthers’ offensive yards.
“Monty is our horse, we’re going to run with him,” said Milton coach Matt Wilson. “Right now, our passing game isn’t where we want it to be, but they made some adjustments. Those guys wanted it a little bit more. They executed and that’s what you get when you have guys that were on a championship-caliber team. When they see blood in the water, they go for it and we just didn’t capitalize on that in the second half.”
Raup threw for 173 yards on 14-of-22 passing, and also added 32 rushing yards with a pair of touchdowns, while Landon Kehoe had 161 all-purpose yards with a touchdown.
After a scoreless first quarter, Fisher broke the ice by breaking loose for a 73-yard touchdown run at the 9:45 mark of the second quarter.
Milton added a 32-yard field goal by Louis Williams with 6:28 left in the first half to go up 10-0.
Danville, meanwhile, punted three times and lost a fumble deep in its own territory on its first four possessions. The turnover didn’t end up hurting the Ironmen, as its defense held. Its defense also overcame a fumble on a kickoff return in the second half, as the Ironmen lost the turnover margin by one for the game but still managed to come out on top on the scoreboard.
After running a normal tempo on those first four drives, the Ironmen went to the up-tempo, no huddle offense when they took over at their own 35 following Williams’ field goal. Raup and the offense then engineered a 10-play, 65-yard drive that was capped by Mason Kingery’s one-yard touchdown run to get Danville on the board and cut Milton’s lead to 10-7.
The Ironmen defense stopped Milton to end the first half before Danville received the second half kickoff and then proceeded to put together another scoring drive, this one nine plays for 80 yards with Raup capping the drive with a one-yard touchdown run to put Danville on top for the first time in the game, 14-10.
Milton answered with its only score of the second half, as Fisher got loose once again for a 29-yard touchdown run to cap a nine-play, 65-yard drive and put the Black Panthers back on top, 17-14, with 3:17 left in the third quarter.
Danville coughed up the ball on the ensuing kickoff but the Ironmen forced Milton into a four-and-out take the ball back at its own 24. From there, Raup guided another long scoring drive, this one nine play and 76 yards, capped by his second one-yard touchdown run of the night to put Danville back on top, 21-17 early in the fourth quarter.
From there, Danville forced two more Milton punts before Kehoe put a cap on the evening with a 38-yard touchdown run with 5:45 remaining.
Excluding Milton’s lone scoring drive in the second half, the Black Panthers had just 19 yards of offense in the second half.
“They were going to stack the box since they knew we weren’t going to pass it that much and I would have done the same thing,” said Wilson. “They found some success when they went up tempo on offense. We have a lot of guys playing both ways so when we tried to sub some guys out, they were catching us with mismatches. But I do like the strides our kids are making. Our record may not show it, but we played tough and that’s all I can expect.”
“We were able to rotate some guys in, we had the numbers so we kept rotating fresh guys in to wear them down and a lot of it was underclassmen. A lot of these guys are ninth, 10th and 11th graders so the future is bright, but we just need to keep finding the right combination and the right things to shut people down,” said Majer.
Danville 28, Milton 17
Milton (1-4) 0 10 7 0 – 17
Danville (2-3) 0 7 7 14 – 28
Second quarter
9:45 – (M) Montgomery Fisher 73-yard run (Williams kick), 2-73, :16
6:28 – (M) Louis Williams 32-yard field goal, 4(-3), 1:27
2:39 – (D) Mason Kingery 1-yard run (Tomko kick), 10-65, 3:49
Third quarter
8:20 – (D) Carter Raup 1-yard run (Tomko kick), 9-80, 3:40
3:17 – (M) Montgomery Fisher 29-yard run (Williams kick), 9-65, 5:03
Fourth quarter
10:59 – (D) Carter Raup 1-yard run (Tomko kick), 9-76, 2:29
5:45 – (D) Landon Kehoe 38-yard run (Tomko kick), 1-38, :10
Statistics
M D
First downs 11 16
Rushes-net yards 41-203 29-146
Passing yardage 30 173
Passing 5-16-0-0 14-22-0-0
Fumbles-lost 1-1 4-2
Penalties-yards 7-50 9-50
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING: Milton: Montgomery Fisher (33-204-2), Jaeden Canelo (7-(-4)), Brady Wolfe (1-3); Danville: Landon Kehoe (13-97-1), Carter Raup (9-32-2), Jack Rarig (4-18), Team (2-(-2)), Mason Kingery (1-1-1)
PASSING: Milton: Montgomery Fisher (5-16-30-0-0); Danville: Carter Raup (14-22-173-0-0)
RECEIVING: Milton: Cole Rhodes (2-19), Jensen Souder (2-7), Brady Wolfe (1-4); Danville: Landon Kehoe (4-64), Liam Hagerman (4-46), Kole Harvey (3-44), Mason Kingery (1-7), Casey Mills (1-6), Jagger Simpson (1-6)