Your Prep Sports

MARION – AJ Coons didn't have his best night in last Friday’s win over West Liberty.

The Solon senior wide receiver felt he had a debt to pay in this week’s game against Marion at Thomas Park after dropping a pair of sure TD passes against the Comets.

He was on his game against the Indians. Coons hauled in six passes for 84 yards and a pair of touchdowns before halftime as the Spartans (3-0) cruised to a convincing 44-0 win on Friday night.

Both of Coons’ TD grabs were a testament to his athletic abilities.

On the first one, a 44-yard catch and run from quarterback Cam Miller, Coons neatly tightroped the sidelines to get into the end zone.

Then, on his second scoring catch, he allowed Miller to buy some time, then made a diving catch to complete an 11-yard scoring play on the final snap before halftime to give his team a 37-0 lead at intermission

“I owed Cam a couple for dropping those ones last week,” Coons said with a laugh. “Coach (Kevin) Miller’s game plan was to continually feed me the ball. He’s always going to give me opportunities because he has such a trust in me and Cam and everybody in our offensive and I just want to thank him for having that trust.”

Coach Miller had a feeling Coons would have a big game against Marion.

“I expected for him to respond that way,” said Coach Miller. “He’s a winner and he’s a guy we’ve got to get involved. The nice thing is that we have enough guys who can make plays and that takes some of the pressure off AJ and that frees him up to make some plays.”

Coons wasn’t the only Spartan on his game Friday night.

Cam Miller, in one half and one play after intermission, put up some staggering numbers of his own.

He completed 10-of-16 passes for 153 yards and three touchdowns. On the ground, he rushed for a team-high 77 yards on eight carries and ran for two more scores.

Miller scored on runs of 11 and 10 yards, hit Jace Andregg on a 32-yard scoring pass and connected twice with Coons, including that final play of the first half where he scrambled around in the pocket, then found Coons, who made the catch between two Marion defenders.

“That play just kind of broke down,” Coons said. “Cam and I just made eye contact and we had a really good idea of what we were going to do. He put it out there and we executed it to perfection.”

The ability to make time to make plays is one of Cam Miller's strengths.

“Cam can ad-lib and make plays,” said Coach Miller. “We give him a lot of freedom to do those kind of things.”

Despite the lopsided score and impressive offensive numbers, Coach Miller saw things still in need of improvement.

“Offensively, we can still be better, no doubt about it.” he said. “There are plenty of things we need to clean up and improve upon. With that said, we did some great things but we have to keep improving as a unit on offense.”

The Solon defense was sharp from the start, holding Marion to under 100 yards of total offense. The Indians had only three first downs and only got inside Solon’s 20-yard line once.”

“I thought defensively, we were really good,” said Coach Miller. “You are forced to play disciplined when you play against a triple option team like Marion. I thought we were tough and physical on defense.”
Marion Coach Tim Lovell said the Spartans were everything he knew they would be.

“We knew Solon was going to be a tough team,” he said. “You watch them on film and they get off the ball, are very well coached and are a perennial powerhouse and mentally we had some things we had to overcome at the beginning of the game that had us in a funk.”

Solon returns home next Friday night, hosting Davenport Assumption at Spartan Stadium. Marion (0-3) will be at Clear Creek-Amana.

                             SOL             MAR
First downs            13                3
Rushes-yards       34-158        26-66
Passing yards       162              18
Comp-Att-Int        11-18-0          3-7-0
Punts-Avg.          3-37.8           6-28.7
Fumbles-lost         0-0               3-2
Penalties-Yards    4-49              0-0

Solon         14  23  7  0  –  44
Marion        0    0   0  0  –   0

SOL — Cam Miller 11 run (Cael O'Neill kick)
SOL — AJ Coons 44 pass from Miller (O'Neill kick)
SOL — Miller 10 run (O'Neill kick)
SOL — Jace Andregg 32 pass from Miller (O'Neill kick)
SOL — Safety, Wyatt Cannon tackled in the end zone
SOL — Coons 11 pass from Miller (O'Neill kick)
SOL — Seamus Poynton 14 run (O'Neill kick)

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING – SOL: Seamus Poynton 9-50, Cam Miller 8-77, Jace Andregg 2-3, Caleb Ebert 4-14, True Eidahl 5-8, Bo Janssen 2-11. Team 1-(minus 5). MAR: Isaac Cehcota 5-12, Lucas Unsen 6-19, Carter Scott 1-0, Dane Carstensen 3-11, Wyatt Cannon 7-15, Max Lovell 4-9
PASSING – SOL: Cam Miller 10-16-0 153, Bo Janssen 1-1-0 9. MAR: Wyatt Canon 3-8-0 18.
RECEIVING – SOL: AJ Coons 6-84, Jace Andregg 3-52, Seamus Poynton 1-17, Mathieux Rehnke 1-9. MAR: Ryan Paulsen 1-7, Drew Carstensen 1-3, CJ Anderson 1-8.

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