Gophers pull away in second half

MHC FOOTBALL — Rushing attack guides Gresham to 32-10 win

By David Ball

The Gresham Outlook, Oct 16, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Jim Clark / The Outlook

Gresham’s Marcello Sifuentes stops Barlow tight end Jake Thran near midfield.

Gresham steamrolled rival Barlow in the second half Friday night to pick up a 32-10 win and stay in a three-team jumble atop the Mount Hood Conference.

Trailing 10-7 at the break, the Gophers relied on their running game to get them back in front.

The team’s first drive of the half covered 80 yards and was kept alive when Justin Potter took a pitchout and went around the right side to convert 4th-and-2. A couple minutes later, he broke loose for 22 yards before taking the next snap through the middle for the go-ahead touchdown.

“We just had to fix our attitude,” Gresham coach Todd Nagel said. “We needed to do a better job getting off the ball, and our offensive line did that in the second half.”

Potter gained 143 and scored all three of his touchdowns after the break. He added a 12-yard run early in the fourth quarter to stretch the Gophers’ lead to 19-10.

Needing to score twice, Barlow went for it on 4th-and-2 on its own end of the field. The Gophers’ defense came up with the game-clinching stop when Wes Meng shot through and knocked Barlow quarterback Campbell Summerfield back a step, and Gophers’ teammate Max Harris finished the play by pulling him down for a 3-yard loss.

Gresham scored a few minutes later on a fourth-down of its own. With Barlow’s defense loading up at the line of scrimmage, Gophers’ quarterback Zach Scherba dropped back and looped a pass over the top for a wide-open Quintin Hardgrove in the end zone.

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