By Van Wade
The Orange Leader
BRIDGE CITY – 142-0.
To say the West Orange-Stark Mustangs have opened their 2016 campaign with a stampede would be a major understatement at this point.
The defending Class 4A Division II state champions rolled into Bridge City on Friday night and humbled the Cardinals 55-0 in front of a capacity crowd.
It’s the third shutout in a row for the Mustangs (3-0) after they blitzed both Nederland (42-0) and Little Cypress-Mauriceville (45-0) in their first two tilts.
The Cardinals (2-1), who entered the game averaging 497 yards a game, were stymied by the WOS “Chain Gang” defense all night as Bridge City netted just 135 total yards.
The Mustangs are yielding just 93 yards a game through three tilts.
Meanwhile, the WOS offense piled up 372 yards of total offense, including a season-high 272 on the ground on just 24 carries.
WOS also got another huge boost in the return game as senior K.J. Miller shredded the Cardinal special teams for a kickoff return touchdown and a punt return for another.
Mustang running back Jeremiah Shaw had 127 yards on eight carries and scored on two runs and caught a TD pass while Keion Hancock rushed for 54 yards on just three totes.
WOS quarterback Jack Dallas completed 9 of 16 passes for 100 yards and a pair of scores.
Bridge City fullback Cayce Draper had a superb outing as he paced Bridge City with 119 tough yards on 22 carries.
“We’re so proud of the kids, they put together a strong 48 minutes of football,” said WOS coach Cornel Thompson. “We had some electric plays on special teams, that dang K.J. Miller has been something else. Offensively, we did some things we wanted to do. Proud of our guys up front, we were able to open up our running game a bit.”
Thompson was proud of the way the Mustangs slowed down a vaunted Slot-T Cardinal running game that led to 112 points in Bridge City’s first two wins.
“Coach [Dwayne] DuBois knows that offense inside and out,” said Thompson. “He did it well while he was at Vidor and did the same thing at H-J and now here in Bridge City. We’ve seen that offense so much from all the people we’ve played the last couple years and our kids have been great at slowing it down and they did it against a pretty good football team tonight. Bridge City will make some noise down the road, I hope they go 8-1.”
DuBois came away impressed with the Mustangs.
“We totally got outplayed in all three phases of the game,” said DuBois. “Make it four, we got outcoached tonight and ‘ll take the blame for that. WOS plays with so much intensity and we needed our kids to match that. We didn’t have a great week of practice leading up to this and it showed. We’ve got to bounce back next week because it doesn’t get any easier by going to Newton. I think the kids will grow and learn from this and we’ve got to bounce back. One more non-district game then district will be here and we want to be ready.”