Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

DURANT – Veteran West Branch coach Butch Pedersen posed a question to his team in the postgame huddle on Friday.

“What type of football do we play?” Pedersen asked.

“Smashmouth,” answered the West Branch players.

On Friday the top-ranked Bears played that style to perfection.

Class 1A No. 1 West Branch rode the powerful running of Andy Henson and a stifling defense to a 49-13 win over third-ranked Durant in meeting of District 5 unbeatens in Durant.

“Physicality is the whole key. We’ve been talking about that for 30 years and we are going to continue to do that,” Pedersen said. “When we are physical we are a pretty good football team.”

West Branch looked a lot better than pretty good on Friday.

Henson ran for 219 yards and four touchdowns as West Branch hammered out 329 rushing yards.

Senior quarterback Tye Hughes threw for 135 yards and a score and West Branch held Durant star Nolan DeLong who entered as the state’s leading rushing in check for most of the night while improving to 6-0 on the season and 3-0 in district play.

Durant dropped to 5-1 and 2-1 in district action.

“We are just playing really physical and really fast,” Henson said. “We haven’t been doing a whole lot of stunts or anything on defense and we don’t do that much fancy stuff on offense we’ve just been playing physical and fast.”

Henson had touchdown runs of 18, 4, 4 and 5 yards and led a smothering West Branch defense from his linebacker spot collecting 8.5 tackles including three for loss and a sack.

The 6-foot-2, 215-pound Henson six runs of at least 10 yards and racked up his 219 rushing yards on just 19 carries.

Durant is a good football team I give them a lot of credit but I really thought Andy stood out tonight,” Pedersen said. “He is for real.”

Henson started the scoring with an 18-yard run on an option play with 3:27 left in the first quarter.

West Branch made it 14-0 when Hughes hit senior Jack McCullough on a 35-yard touchdown pass with 10:20 left in the first half.

“It was our bunch formation we just put it in and I have a route down the hashes,” McCullough said. “I had a little leeway and Tye threw a great ball and I went and got it.”
West Branch and Henson were just getting warmed up.

A 46-yard run by Henson set up a 1-yard touchdown plunge by Hughes that pushed the lead to 21-0 and his 4-yard jaunt with 58 seconds left in the opening half gave West Branch a 27-0 halftime lead.

“I think we were imposing our will on their front seven,” Henson said. “Having Tye is a huge help in spreading teams out and helping us run the ball.”

While Henson was piling up 124 of his 219 rushing yards in the first half he was also helping the Bear defense coral DeLong.

The standout Durant senior entered with a state-leading 1,429 yards but was limited to 19 yards on 15 carries in the first half.

After a 10-yard run by DeLong on its first offensive snap of the game Durant managed just 13 yards of offense the rest of the half.

“That definitely got us excited playing against a player like him,” Henson said. “He’s a good player, he’s the leading rusher in all classes but I think we held him pretty well tonight.”

Henson added touchdown runs of 4 and 5 yards in the second half and Cale Seydel scored on a 22-yard run as West Branch put the game away.

“We don’t do a lot of things but we show a lot of formations and we are pretty solid in what we do,” Pedersen said. “When you have that and you don’t beat yourself you can be successful.”

DeLong threw a 16-yard touchdown pass and scored on a 72-yard run in the second half, finishing with 101 yards rushing to notch his 18^th consecutive 100-yard game with a touchdown.

                                               WB                 DUR

First downs                             24                    5

Rushes-yards                          46-329             25-86

Comp-Att-Int                          10-16-0           7-13-2

Passing yards                          135                  85

Total yards                              464                  171

Punts-Avg.                              1-44                 5-42.2

Fumbles-lost                           0-0                   1-0

Penalties-yards                       4-40                 7-80

West Branch              7  20  13  10  –  49

Durant                        0   0     7   6   –  13

WB – Andy Henson 18 run (Wyatt Fiderlein kick)

WB – Jack McCullough 35 pass from Tye Hughes (Fiderlein kick)

WB – Hughes 1 run (Fiderlein kick)

WB – Henson 4 run (Kick failed)

WB – Henson 4 run (Pass failed)

DUR – Grant Hein 17 pass from Nolan DeLong (Isaac Nielsen kick)

WB – Cale Seydel 22 run (Fiderlein kick)

WB – Henson 5 run (Kick failed)

DUR – DeLong 72 run (Kick failed)

WB – Fiderlein 39 field goal

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – WB: Andy Henson 19-219, Tye Hughes 9-43, Cale Seydel 9-37, Carver Boelk 4-17, Auron Marsh 2-16, Kinnick Boelk 2-2, Team 2-(-5). DUR: Nolan DeLong 21-106, Garrett Hollenback 1-2, Isaac Nielsen 3-(-22).

PASSING – WB: Tye Hughes 11-16-0 135. DUR: Isaac Nielsen 5-8-1 63, Nolan DeLong 2-5-1 22.

RECEIVING – WB: Jack McCullough 3-53, Trenton Schutte 2-45, Kinnick Boelk 4-24, Carver Boelk 2-11. DUR: Brady Meincke 4-59, Grant Hein 2-11, Caden Meyer 1-5

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