A.L. Brown vs. Mooresville

On a night when the A.L. Brown football team couldn’t find an offensive spark and hurt themselves with first-half penalties, Mooresville had plenty of firepower in the foot of senior kicker Isaac Riffle, who led the Blue Devils to a 30-0 non-conference victory Friday night at Kannapolis Memorial Stadium.

Riffle had several booming kickoffs and punts, along with three field goals for Mooresville.

“What a weapon when you have a kicker that can make (opposing offenses) go 80 yards every time, and that’s tough to beat,” Wonders coach Mike Newsome said. “We have some injuries to some key positions that hurt us, but there are no excuses”

The Wonders were consistently pinned deep in their own territory and struggled with their own kicking game, giving Mooresville great field position throughout the first half. A.L. Brown was able to minimize the damage, though, and trailed 7-0 at halftime, thanks to its stout run defense led by B.J. Foster, Torren Wright and Jatarius Mason.

“Defensively, we played really well, but (the Blue Devils’) touchdowns were all short fields because we put our defense in some tough spots,” Newsome said. “Overall we just didn’t play very well tonight.”

Mooresville adjusted its game plan at halftime and came out with a pass-heavy attack in the third quarter, led by senior quarterback Hunter Deberardino and receivers Keshaun Black and Ashton Michael Edstrom.

Debarardino spread the ball around with a combination of short passes to the flat, screen passes and jet sweeps to his receivers, who were extremely effective running in open space. The Wonders couldn’t generate enough pressure in the backfield to disrupt the Mooresville passing attack and had difficultly making open-field tackles on the speedy Blue Devil receivers.

For the Wonders, junior Isaiah Black got the start at quarterback, while sophomore Cam Kromah played most of the second half. Both showed great athleticism but were a combined 8-for-21 passing for 74 yards.

A.L. Brown’s leading rusher was Todd Kennedy, who tallied only 12 yards on 11 carries.