By RYAN ARENA
L’Observateur

LAPLACE — Coach Frank Monica liked the effort his St. Charles Catholic Comets gave in Thursday’s home football scrimmage against University. But he found praise for little else.
The Cubs outscored the Comets five touchdowns to one and dominated throughout after kicking things off with a 70-yard Manny Miles to D’Vante Dotson touchdown on the first play between the first teams.
“It was a pretty embarrassing performance,” said Monica. “We set out to stop the big play, and we failed to do that. We were overaggressive at times and cheated on play-action, which allowed them the chance to hit some big plays.’
“Offensively, we really struggled to get first downs or get anything going at all. I can’t really pinpoint anyone who played well on either side of the ball.”
Early on, the Comets’ defense did come up with a big stop after University got to the SCC 2-yard line via a Miles 36-yard scramble.
But the Comets couldn’t capitalize on offense, and University scored its second touchdown of the day on a Miles to Dotson 5-yard slant pattern.
Justin DuBose earned a defensive highlight for the Comets when he intercepted a jumpball pass in the endzone with the second teams on the field.
Justin Loupe scored SCC’s lone touchdown on a 1-yard run.
15-year old Dylan Moses scored on a 60-yard touchdown late in the scrimmage. Moses already has scholarship offers from LSU and Alabama, among other schools, as the 6-foot-2, 220-pounder is already a strong national prospect.
“We were outmanned in certain places,” said Monica.
“They’re really talented, but that doesn’t allow them to control you knowing your assignments. We were very poor in that regard.’
“Our team played very hard, but we need to play smarter going forward.”
Monica said that in gearing up for the team’s jamboree contest next week against Riverside, the Comets will go back to the drawing board.
“We’ve gotta go back to work Monday. It’ll be like the first day of camp,” he said.
“We threw the whole offense at them. Now, we need to scale it to the things we can execute, and not the things that look good up on the board. We made more mental than physical errors.’
“Hopefully, we get a little bit better over the next week, and especially over the next two weeks heading into our opener.”