Spartans attack Martinsville 63-0
Giles (63) vs. Martinsville (0)
Written: Nov 15, 2014
By BRIAN WOODSON
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
PEARISBURG, Va.— As a former defensive lineman at Virginia Tech, Orion Martin knows how important trench warfare is on the football field.
Now his Bulldogs know the same.
“The kids still haven’t bought into the weight room like I want,” said Martin, in his second season as head coach at Martinsville. “We are trying to get them to sell out to that and hopefully by this game they will see what a difference the weight room makes...”
The top-seeded and defending state champion Giles Spartans dominated 16th seeded Martinsville, running for 505 yards in a 63-0 rout of the Bulldogs in the opening round of the Group 2A West playoffs on a bitterly cold Friday night at Stephen C. Ragsdale Stadium.
Giles (11-0) won its 26th straight game, while the Bulldogs finished up at 1-10 on the season.
“We just got beat in the trenches tonight,” said Martin, who played at Virginia Tech from 2004-09. “When you can’t get anything going up front, you are dead in the water on both offense and defense.
“That is a heck of a football team we lost to. If I am going to lose to somebody, I want to lose to the state champs. Best wishes to them on their road to the state championship.”
Giles dominated from the start, with Brett Whitlow dashing 44 yards for a touchdown on the third play from scrimmage. That was only the beginning of a impressive first quarter that saw the Spartans score 35 points on just 13 play from scrimmage.
Meanwhile, the Bulldogs had negative-21 yards in the opening quarter, and finished with a net total of negative-3 for the game.
“In a game like this you have got to get off to a good start,” Giles head coach Jeff Williams said. “That is critical, you get in games like this, you can’t let people hang around, make mistakes and things like that, and that never happened.
“We got off to a great start, and the result is we got the win.”
Brian Mann led the Spartans with 180 yards and three touchdowns from 40, 34 and 58 yards, while Whitlow had 113 yards, including scores of 44 and 11 yards. Patrick Beidleman scored twice from 44 and 4 yards.
Giles had outgained Martinsville 393-12 in the opening half, while Bulldogs’ quarterback Zanthus Hairston was harassed all night by the Spartans’ defense, led by Austin Cunningham and Dean Taylor, who recovered a fumble in the third quarter and returned it for a touchdown, his third such play of the season.
“He has been a real pleasant surprise for us inside, he has got really good quickness and good speed,” Williams said. “When you play hard, great things happen.”
Whitlow’s first quarter score was followed by a 44-yard run by Beidleman, a transfer from Fort Chiswell, who scored on the Spartans’ second play from scrimmage. He did it again moments later after Cunningham recovered at fumble at the Martinsville 10, and he scampered in from 2 yards.
The Spartans would add an 11-yard run by Whitlow on the fourth play of the next possession, and would get a 40-yard run by Mann on the second play of the next drive for a 35-0 lead with 3:34 still left in the opening quarter.
“Giles probably doesn’t have one or two guys that can outrun our guys, but they are winning because they hit the weight room,” Martin said. “They are physically strong, until our guys commit to the weight room, we are going to expect this. We have got a long ways to go.”
All of those yards came via the offensive line, which simply pushed the Bulldogs out of the way, adding two second quarter scores on runs of 34 and 58 yards by Mann.
“That is the main thing with us and that is what we want to do and that is what they did,” said Williams, who began to clear his bench late in the second quarter. “We got some long runs on them early and got up quick and got a lot of kids in the ball game. We got to play a lot of kids, that was a plus too.”
Martinsville finally got its initial first down of the game on a 19-yard run by Hairston with 8:09 left in the second period. The drive stalled at the 23, the closest the Bulldogs got all night against the Giles defense.
“I am really starting to be more pleased with how our defense is starting to play as we come on,” Williams said. “We are kind of athletic back there in the perimeter, we have got some kids that can move and run up front so it is working out pretty good.
“They all feed off each other, they played together as a team and I thought we had great pursuit tonight also, that was a big thing too.”
Giles added two more touchdowns in the third on the fumble recovery off a poor option toss by Hairston, and a 21-yard scamper by Austin Pennington.
“We are not physical yet to be able to compare to them,” Martin said. “That is their strength, and we knew that is what we were going to get, but they were just knocking us off the ball.
“There is not much you can do defensively when your D-linemen are getting knocked back to the linebacker level. We are a year away, or two away from being able to compete with them physically, but we couldn’t get anything going offensively.”
Giles will host Lee or Appomattox next weekend in the second round of what is five weeks of playoff football.
“It is just one game at a time, that is it, and that is all you can do,” Williams said. “Hopefully if you can play well enough, you move on, that is playoff football.”
bwoodson@bdtonline.com
/ Twitter @bdtwoodson
at Stephen C. Ragsdale Stadium
Martinsville................0 0 0 0 — 0
Giles.......................35 14 14 0 — 63
Scoring
First Quarter
GL—Brett Whitlow 44 run (kick failed) 10:53
GL—Patrick Beidleman 44 run (Brian Mann run) 8:19
GL—Beidleman 4 run (Whitlow kick) 6:39
GL—Whitlow 11 run (Whitlow kick) 4:39
GL—Brian Mann 40 run (Whitlow kick) 3:34
Second Quarter
GL—Mann 34 run (Whitlow kick) 11:08
GL—Mann 58 run (Whitlow kick) 8:25
Third Quarter
GL—Dean Taylor 25 fumble return (Max Riley kick) 8:17
GL—Austin Pennington 21 run (Riley kick) :19.9
———
Team Statistics
First downs: MV 4, GL 19. Rush-yards: MV 15-(-2), GL 43-505. Pass yards: MV -1, GL 0. Comp-Att-Int: MV 1-12-0; GL 0-1-0. Fumbles-Lost: MV 8-3, GL 1-0. Penalty-Yards: 0-0, GL 1-10. Punts-Avg: MV 7-32.6, GL 0-0.
———
Individual Statistics
Rush-yards: MV Satchel King 3-6, JaQuice Sydnor 3-4, Aaron Martin 1-1, Zanthus Hairston 16-(-13), GL Brian Mann 8-180, Brett Whitlow 7-113, Ryan Beidleman 10-82, Patrick Beidleman 4-59, Brandon Chapman 10-30, John Teats 3-22, Austin Pennington 1-21, Zane Williams 2-4.
Passing: MV Hairston 1-11-0-(-1)-0, Martin 1-0-0-0-0; GL Mann 0-1-0-0-0.
Receiving: MV Riggs Jordan 1-(-1), GL none.
Takeaways: MV none: GL Austin Cunningham fumble recovery, Dean Taylor fr, Caleb O’Neal, fr, Josh Combs fr.
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