When a football team scores 41 points, the first instinct is to look at the offensive numbers. But for St. Pius X on Friday night, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
The Lancers got scoring contributions from their defense and special teams as well the offense, and improved to 4-1 on the season with a 41-0 win at Herculaneum. St. Pius is tied with Valle Catholic atop the I-55 Conference standings at 3-0. The Lancers and Warriors meet in Ste. Genevieve on Oct. 25.
Since dropping their season opener to Windsor, St. Pius has outscored its last four opponents 138-25.
The Lancers scored on their opening drive against Herculaneum. Running backs Noah Lampros and Nate Ruble led an impressive 11-play, 61-yard drive, all on the ground, that ate up half of the first quarter. Lampros capped the possession with a 5-yard touchdown run with 6:46 left for a 7-0 lead.
The Blackcats’ first two drives stalled. St. Pius quarterback Carson Fischer, who completed 8-of- 12 passes for 138 yards, connected with Michael Argana for 36 of those to take his team to the Herky 1-yard-line. On the next play, Nate Ruble punched it in and the Lancers led 14-0 with 48 seconds to go in the first quarter.
With 10:21 left in the second, St. Pius’s defense forced a punt and Josh Ruble returned it 51 yards for a score and to give the Lancers a 21-0 lead. Ruble picked off a pass by Herculaneum QB Ethan Coy on the next Blackcat drive and, after a pass from Fischer to Riley Naeger for 15 yards and aided by a personal foul on Herculaneum, Lampros scored again for a 28-0 halftime lead.
The other St. Pius touchdowns, in what was a penalty-filled final two quarters, came in the fourth. With 6:05 left in the game, on fourth-and-6, Fischer found Josh Ruble for a 26-yard scoring strike. About 30 seconds later (5:35 to go), Jonathan Lehn picked off a pass and returned it 37 yards for a touchdown.
The St. Pius defense had five interceptions on the game and the offense racked up 322 yards. Lampros had 61 yards on 15 carries, while Nate Ruble rushed 17 times for 74 yards. Josh Ruble caught three passes for 77 yards, and Naeger had 67 yards on a pair of receptions.
“That first game (against the Owls), we lost to a really good team with Derek Williams (at quarterback) and three or four really good offensive linemen,” St. Pius head coach Dan Oliver said. “Since then, we’ve been rolling along. This was something we always thought we were capable of doing; striking at all different levels. Our defense has been outstanding ever since game one. We were on a drought where we weren’t getting any turnovers, so we broke through those floodgates tonight. And our special teams were ready, too.”
“Everyone’s really bought in,” Josh Ruble said. “We’ve been listening to what the coaches say, and trusting each other. Personally, I’m trying to be the leader for the defense. And our focus in practice, since losing that first game has been great, even if we have a bad day.”
Herculaneum head coach Cody Hunter said his team was manhandled in the first and fourth quarters.
“I thought we played well in the third, but you’re not going to play with anybody when you perform like we did,” he said. ‘Needless to say, I’m not very happy with the way our team played.”