By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

LAPLACE — Miller McCoy entered Friday night’s game with Class 3A’s top ranked team, St. Charles, boasting the state’s most prolific passer and carrying a signature win in its back pocket after winning at Newman last week.

But it took just six minutes and change of gametime for the Comets to put any thought of an upset to bed.

St. Charles scored three touchdowns in that time span, 28 points in the first quarter, and 49 points by half in a 55-2 rout of the visiting Lions at Thomas Dupuy Stadium.

The Comets were all but unstoppable offensively, going a perfect seven-for-seven on its first seven drives of the night, before the second team entered the game.

Running back Lazedrick Thompson rushed for over 100 yards and scored four times to lead the Comets.

“We put a lot of emphasis this week on ball security and putting points on the board,” said Thompson, echoing Coach Frank Monica’s words before the game about limiting the chances an explosive McCoy offense would have. “Everyone did their job tonight.”

In answering the question of what would win out between a Lions offense that entered the night averaging over 30 points a contest and a Comets defense that had just given up 15 total points, the SCC defense answered emphatically, and it wasn’t close. McCoy’s Norbert Ralph was harassed all night by the Comets’ pressure, and when he could get a clean pass off, his receivers were more often than not blanketed by the St. Charles defensive backs and linebackers.

“Our defense really accepted the challenge tonight,” said Monica. “We knew that we’d have to get pressure up front and have good coverage behind them. It goes hand in hand. You need one to aid the other … we were able to force three and outs and play on a short field.”

McCoy began the game by crowding the line of scrimmage with its defensive backs, electing to try and slow down the run at the risk of letting the passing game get going. St. Charles obliged; McCoy caught SCC in a second-and-29, but consecutive passes from Donnie Savoie to Sammy miller of 21 and 34 yards respectively dug the team out of that hole, eventually setting up a 2-yard Thompson score to make it 7-0.

“We didn’t anticipate them crowding the line as much as they did, since we’re able to throw a little bit. So we had to do some things to get us going. Our receivers did a real good job running precise routes and Donnie got the ball to them,” said Monica.

After forcing a three and out defensively, the Comets saw Marcus Hall return the ensuing McCoy punt all the way for a score — but it was called back by penalty. It would not matter, as it took SCC just three plays to score, this time on Thompson’s second touchdown run, 29 yards in length. That made it 14-0 with 7:32 left in the first quarter.

At the 5:36 mark, the SCC defense got in on the scoring when Nick Montagut cleanly intercepted a pass and found real estate, taking the ball 26 yards for a score to make it 21-0.

Another three-and-out by the Lions led to a shanked punt and another short SCC touchdown drive, this one 29 yards, capped on a 5-yard Thompson scoring run that was set up by a Savoie 22-yard completion to Miller.

Early in the second quarter, Savoie dialed up tight end Michael Millet on a play-fake from the McCoy 1 for a score to make it 35-0.

Brandon Zimmer (one yard), Hall (five yards) and Thompson (19 yards) each added scores for SCC.

SCC allowed just one score, a safety that followed a Jeffrey Hall interception when he was ruled down at the 1; McCoy registered the safety a play later. SCC intercepted Ralph three times, with Hall, Montagut and Connor Western logging the takeaways.

Now 4-0 and still ranked atop Class 3A, Thompson said that the secret to the team’s success isn’t actually all that much of one.

“Hard work,” he said. “Playing for one another. We’re going to keep it up and we hope to make it to the Dome.”