{"id":27183,"date":"2016-11-19T12:25:21","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T17:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/?p=27183"},"modified":"2016-11-19T12:25:21","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T17:25:21","slug":"clay-puts-a-running-clock-on-the-wildcats-in-42-14-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/?p=27183","title":{"rendered":"Clay puts a running clock on the Wildcats in 42-14 win"},"content":{"rendered":"

MACLENNY-Four weeks ago, Clay left\u00a0Memorial Stadium with a\u00a028-14 loss and no answer for stopping the Baker County ground attack that accumulated over 250 yards on the ground.<\/p>\n

Fast forward four weeks later, they were well prepared for it in a Clay 48-14 win last night at Memorial Stadium.<\/p>\n

Clay defensive coordinator Jay Stilianou made it his mission the last four weeks to prepare and stop the Wildcats offense. It worked holding the Wildcats to season low 5 rushing yards.<\/p>\n

“There really wasn’t anything secretive we did,\u00a0we really just focused on the little things,\u00a0we missed so many tackles in that first meeting,” Stilianou said. “5 (Seth Paige) and 22 (Josh Haygood) are really good and our\u00a0goal was\u00a0to not let 5 and 22 beat us tonight and they didn’t.”<\/p>\n

Clay won the toss\u00a0and differed the ball to the second half putting its defense to the test right away.<\/p>\n

After holding the Wildcats to a quick\u00a0three and out, junior quarterback Caleb Eason went to work carving up the Wildcats defense.<\/p>\n

Eason went 6 for 6 on the opening drive capping a 81-yard drive with a 14-yard touchdown catch to Ajay\u00a0Belanger to give Clay a 7-0 lead\u00a0seven minutes into the game.<\/p>\n

On the first play of the second\u00a0quarter, Eason added to his total with a 50-yard strike to\u00a0Jaylan Jenkins for a\u00a014-0 lead.<\/p>\n

The fourth bad snap\u00a0of the first half for Baker County,\u00a0proved to be costly as Clay recovered at the 25-yard line and took advantage of it.<\/p>\n

Two plays later, Colin Wilson raced 15 yards down the\u00a0left sideline untouched for a 21-0\u00a0lead with 10 minutes left till half.<\/p>\n

From there it only\u00a0got worse as the Wildcats offense that managed over 200 yards last time had no\u00a0answer for the Devils defense and was forced to punt six times in the first half, while also fumbling the snap\u00a0five times in the first half.<\/p>\n

Quarterback Joe Green (11 of 21 for 171 yards and two touchdowns), tailback Seth Paige (3 yards on 6 carries) and fullback Josh Haygood (1 yard on 1 carry) combined for 5 yards on 15 carries on the night.<\/p>\n

Following another punt,\u00a0Eason connected with Derek Smith for a 2-yard completion\u00a0on fourth and goal to increase the\u00a0lead to 28-0 with 6:01 left till halftime.<\/p>\n

Cedric Brown bulldozed\u00a0his way in for a\u00a03-yard run just before half to\u00a0give Clay a surprising 35-0 halftime lead.<\/p>\n

\"Caleb<\/a>
Caleb Eason had a career first half going 16 of 21 for 257 yards and three touchdowns in the Devils 42-14 win over Baker County last night.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following the\u00a0earlier loss to Baker County, Hoeksta and his\u00a0staff decided to move Jenkins back to receiver and move Eason to quarterback to change up the offense. Eason didn’t play at all in the earlier game besides\u00a0holding\u00a0the ball on\u00a0 the point after attempts in that game.<\/p>\n

The move has paid off as Clay has averaged 40 points a game every since and\u00a0Eason\u00a0had a career first half.<\/p>\n

“Coach (Ryan Wolfe) and I made the decision and it’s been paying off,” Hoekstra said.\u00a0Caleb is a very smart kid\u00a0and we designed the offense to\u00a0spread\u00a0out the field and now we have Jaylan (Jenkins), AJ (Belanger), Derek (Smith), Colin (Wilson)\u00a0and\u00a0Marcus (Jones) to spread the\u00a0ball around and get people out.”<\/p>\n

Eason finished the first half 16 of 21 for 257 yards and 3 touchdowns before finishing 16 of\u00a024 for 257 yards and three touchdowns.<\/p>\n

“My coaches designed the offense to get space\u00a0with our\u00a0athletes\u00a0and they make me\u00a0look good,” Eason stated. “My offensive line did a\u00a0great job blocking their butts off and gave me plenty of time to make plays.”<\/p>\n

The big lead forced a running clock in the second half, only stopping after scores .<\/p>\n

Following\u00a0a Eason interception, Baker County\u00a0finally got on the scoreboard\u00a0as Joe Green connected with Lee Graham for a 35-yard strike cutting\u00a0the lead to 35-7 midway through the third quarter.<\/p>\n

Brown\u00a0(102 yards on 16 carries) added to his total with a\u00a015 yard touchdown run with about four minutes left in the game increasing the lead to 42-7.<\/p>\n

“We just got him back this week, he’s been hurt\u00a0and now to have him and Colin (Wilson) that’s a great tandem to have,” Hoekstra added.<\/p>\n

Green closed out his\u00a0career with a\u00a023-yard toss to Cam Mobley in the closing seconds to finish it at 42-14.<\/p>\n

Baker County (9-2) had a chance to advance to\u00a0the third\u00a0round for the time in school history but\u00a0now dropped to 0-6 all-time in\u00a0second round playoff games.<\/p>\n

“We saw stuff on film we knew we could take advantage of that we didn’t see the first time and our coaches had a great game plan tonight and our kids gave great effort tonight as well, ” Stilianou added. “Our kids were phenomenal on Monday\u00a0and they were fired up to be here,\u00a0they wanted to come back\u00a0here.”<\/p>\n

Hoekstra echoed those statements as well\u00a0after the game in his post game comments in his team\u00a0huddle.<\/p>\n

“We found a way\u00a0to make adjustments and you\u00a0all know what we have been doing the last month was preparing you for this\u00a0and you just beat a really good team and we put a running clock on them,” Hoekstra added.<\/p>\n

Now Clay continues\u00a0one of its greatest\u00a0traditions a Thanksgiving Day practice, where the whole community comes out and plays football with the team including several former players.<\/p>\n

A day later\u00a0Clay (9-3) will travel to New Port Richey River Ridge (9-2) Friday in the regional semi-final round (Elite 8). A win over River Ridge\u00a0would allow\u00a0Clay\u00a0to host the regional final Dec. 2 against the\u00a0Rickards-Ponte Vedra winner.<\/p>\n

“I can’t wait for Thanksgiving Day practice with all of our friends and family\u00a0support,” Eason said, “It’s one more thing to be thankful for.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MACLENNY-Four weeks ago, Clay left\u00a0Memorial Stadium with a\u00a028-14 loss and no answer for stopping the Baker County ground attack that accumulated over 250 yards on the ground. Fast forward four weeks later, they were well prepared for it in a Clay 48-14 win last night at Memorial Stadium. Clay defensive coordinator Jay Stilianou made it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":27186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[232,101,303],"class_list":["post-27183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school","category-top-stories","tag-baker-county","tag-clay","tag-top-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Clay-Devils-team.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}