By halftime, only one suspenseful moment remained.
Then the king of the Catawba defense — Devonte Peterson — was crowned king of the 2000 Homecoming court.
“No he didn’t!” groaned Indians head coach DavidBennett after learning of his All-American’s other honor. “All they’ll do is ridicule that boy.”
Catawba’s 42-0 halftime lead over NorthGreenville onSaturday left plenty of time for Peterson’s teammates to get their digs in. Few starters saw any time at all in the final 30 minutes as the fourth-ranked Division II team in the nation finished off a 55-0 romp against the NAIA squad from South Carolina.
“They were joking on me, calling me ‘King Cinderella,’ ” Peterson said. “They were saying how sweet it was — and that’s ‘sweet in a ‘feminine’ manner. It’s OK, though, it’s all in fun. We’ve got football on our minds, that’s the No. 1 goal.”
The Indians improved to 7-0 for the first time in school history and got exactly what they were looking for in front of the homecoming crowd at Shuford Stadium. Catawba had struggled offensively the last three weeks and needed to get untracked before next Saturday’s showdown against Carson-Newman.
“It’s a good confidence-builder for our guys,”Bennett said. “We needed to score some points. We haven’t done it for the last three weeks.”
Despite the recent struggles, Catawba still averages better than 35 points per game. The Indians reached that mark just five minutes into the second quarter.
The Indians raced down the field with the opening drive only to watch Matt Gross miss two field goals — one from 44 yards that didn’t count because the Mounties were offsides — and the next from 39.
Greenville QBCorey Fountain trotted onto the field hoping to make the Indians pay for the miscue. But on the first play, he dropped back to pass, got smashed by a blitzing Darris Morris and fumbled. Radale Lockhart scooped up the ball and rumbled 16 yards for the 7-0 lead.
“We just know as a group that we can pretty much get a quarterback to do what we want him to do by getting pressure on him,”Morris said.
“I didn’t expect Darris Morris to bring pressure like he did, I didn’t expect Radale to pick up a touchdown,” Peterson said. “Some days I guess the boys feel it and they play past their potential, over their heads.”
North Greenville finished the half with two first downs, one by penalty. The Indians allowed just 25 yards of total offense in the first 30 minutes.
On offense,Catawba racked up 19 first downs and 352 total yards in the half.
Quarterback Mitch Ellis extended the lead to 14 points when he followed the block of Arnold Gaither on a 24-yard run. Joe Hilliard made it 21-0 at the end of the first quarter when he stepped past the line of scrimmage on fourth-and-1 and saw nothing but open field for a 29-yard score.
One minute into the second quarter, Ellis connected with Ryan Millwood for a 13-yard fade pattern in the end zone.
Shaun Crump’s 4-yard TD run at the 10:36 mark gave Catawba 35 points, and yet another tailback Greenville couldn’t catch, Tony Hawkins, darted in from 6 yards out for the 42-0 halftime margin.
“I know how General Custer felt when he was sitting there looking at all of those Indians,”said a laughing North Greenville head coach Joe Johnson said. “We got scalped a little bit. You can’t get to be No. 4 in the country and not have an excellent football team, but they were an even better football team that Ithought they’d be.”
Almost with more weapons than Bennett knew what to do with. The Catawba coach spent the second half getting as many people as possible playing time. Crump finished with 87 yards on 18 carries, Hawkins 72 yards on nine rushes. Starters Kevin McKenzie and Hilliard combined for 105 yards on 13 first-half carries, then relaxed the rest of the day.
“The main thing was to get everybody some reps, let the younger guys come together as a team,”Crump said. “It felt good. Being fourth in the nation, that’s the way we’re supposed to play ball.”
Especially against a football team just 11 years in the making — and only six of those years as a four-year program.
“It’s really hard to bring them into an environment like this and them not get shell-shocked a little bit,”said Johnson, who had to add the Catawba game after one of the Mounties’ other opponents dropped back to junior varsity. “There were other teams I’d rather have played, believe me,”he added with a laugh.
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