KENDALLVILLE – As East Noble coach Alex Stewart spoke to his team following Friday’s 19-0 victory over North Side, he made sure to mention what Blitz, and everyone else in attendance, was thinking.
North Side came in with the hype, but East Noble brought the substance.
Skill, knowledge and fundamental football can overcome anything, even a roster laden with college prospects.
It’s not often that East Noble enters a game as the underdog, with a bit of a chip on its shoulder. All Coach Stewart has done is lead this program to 24 wins over the last two years.
And yet there we were on Friday, expecting to see the Legends show it is for real with a big road win to open the season.
Instead, it was East Noble that proved it isn’t going anywhere.
“We saw everything online picking against us and players ranked above us, and we love being the bad guys and ruining people’s day,” said senior Alex Scott, who had an interception in the win. “We know they had athletes, but we played East Noble football, smashmouth football and knew we were going to get it done.”
North Side wasn’t at full strength, but Blitz doubts it would have mattered. Junior starting quarterback Brandon Sanders did not play, which thrust Maalik Moore behind center. While Moore has athleticism in bunches and can play nearly anywhere, he looked uncomfortable at the position throughout, partly because of the lack of experience and partly because East Noble’s relentless defense.
Eventually, the Legends went to sophomore Donte Adams at quarterback in the third quarter. While the diminutive sophomore made some things happen with his arm, and allowed Moore to affect the game more from his natural position, North Side still couldn’t get anywhere close to putting points on the board.
East Noble knew that Sanders was not going to play, and game planned accordingly.
“Both (Moore and Adams) are dangerous and great athletes, but we just worried about us and running our stuff well,” Stewart said.
Stewart’s squad delivered, especially defensively. Despite what some people may call a talent gap, and morons like Blitz calling for them to lose by double digits, the Knights went to work from the jump. They made life uncomfortable for North Side, from Moore consistently being hit in the backfield to commanding the point of attack in the trenches on both sides.
The Legends wanted to get the run game going with Moore and Brandon Gaither II. It simply couldn’t.
Meanwhile, the North Side defense held its own, but was consistently put into bad situations. The first two touchdowns came following Legends turnovers, including a fumble inside their own five-yard line late in the first half that was turned into Ian Ramey’s second two-yard touchdown run of the night.
Even when things went well for the Legends, it quickly unraveled. When Moore took a punt back 98 yards for what seemed to be a North Side touchdown that would bring some interest to the fourth quarter half, it was called back by a clear hold.
But this game wasn’t decided by miscues, it was decided by a team that felt disrespected, was prepared for what the Legends were going to do and were not going to let a decade-long Week 1 winning streak at home end.
It all added up to a dominant performances by a team that we should be used to by now putting up dominating performances.
“We know every Friday night we are going to get our opponent’s best shot because of the success of East Noble football,” Stewart said. “I know there was a lot of hype coming into this game, but our thing was let’s go play our brand of football. Let’s be physical, tough, hard-nosed and do whatever it takes to come out with a victory.”
Apparently, Blitz needed a reminder of the way things operate in Kendallville.
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