St. John's thumps Bucs on Saturday
HOOVER – The thunderstorms stopped both Hoover and St. John’s on Friday night, but nothing could stop the Cadets on Saturday morning.
St. John’s College (DC) High School rolled up 602 yards of total offense and thumped the host Bucs 42-14 on Saturday morning. It was the Bucs’ worst loss since a 44-16 defeat to Camden County (GA) in 2008. Hoover head coach Josh Niblett said the postponement of the game had nothing to do with the outcome.
“As far as coming back the next morning, I’ve never done that before,” he said. “It is what it is. You’ve got to line up and they’ve got to line up.”
The game resumed at the 3:26 mark in the first quarter with the Cadets leading 7-0. Hoover ran 12 consecutive plays to begin the restart but ended with an interception by Will Reichard on a fake punt. St. John’s scored on the next play when quarterback Sol-Jay Maiava hit Rakim Jarrett for a 75-yard touchdown.
The Bucs (1-1) answered on the ensuing drive when Larry McCammon plunged in from one yard out, cutting the deficit to 14-7 with 8:50 left in the second quarter. Hoover got an interception by Codey Martin, which he returned 100 yards, but it was negated by a block in the back penalty. The Hoover drive stalled, and St. John’s missed a 29-yard field goal as the game reached halftime.
“When we get a chance to switch the momentum over, we didn’t,” Niblett said.
Hoover reached the red zone on its opening drive of the second half, riding McCammon for 59 yards on the drive, before Hoover quarterback Robby Ashford was intercepted at the 5-yard line. St. John’s (2-0) scored four plays later when Maiava hit Cam Ross for a 48-yard score.
The ground game took over for the Cadets from there, as Colby McDonald scored on runs of 58 and 61 yards, and Ronald Cook scored from nine yards out.
Hoover scored on its final drive when quarterback Josh Lundy connected with M.J. Rogers from a yard out.
For St. John’s, Maiava finished 9-of-19 for 227 yards and two scores. He rushed for 57 yards and another touchdown. McDonald rushed for 127 yards on only four carries, and Cook piled up 114 yards on 14 carries. Jarrett caught five balls for 125 yards, while Ross produced 91 yards on three grabs. Keilan Robinson, the running back committed to Alabama, did not play on Saturday but rushed seven times for 28 yards Friday night.
“They’ve got a lot of athletes, a lot of speed,” Niblett said. “But at the same time, we’ve got a little bit of speed, too. It’s about matchups and they were able to get some matchups they wanted. It is what it is. It’s a football game. It’s about matchups, it’s about leverage, it’s about blocking and tackling, and we didn’t do those things very well today. When you don’t do those things very well you can’t expect to win. You’re just hoping something happens, and in this program we’ve never been about hoping something. We’ve always been about controlling our own destiny.”
For Hoover, Ashford completed 11-of-27 passes for 158 yards and two interceptions. McCammon rushed 21 times for 152 yards. George Pickens caught seven passes for 119 yards, all in the first half. Rogers caught three passes for 23 yards, all from Lundy, who finished 5-of-7 for 38 yards. Martin intercepted two passes for Hoover.
Next week Hoover hosts Thompson in a Class 7A, Region 3 matchup.
“Next week will be a totally different week,” Niblett said. “We drag this past week or the week before into this then it isn’t going to help us. We’ll get locked in. We’ll get focused on what we’re doing. We’ll get this one out of our system. I told the kids they need to think about this one a little bit, because they need to, and we don’t get beat 42-14 around here a whole lot, and we don’t plan on starting.”
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