If there was any doubt that the Allen Eagles weren’t the best team in 6A entering Friday night’s game against Denton Guyer, they answered those questions with a dominating 42-7 win against their district 6-6A foe.
“That was a great team win and was probably our best performance of the season, and it goes to how we showed up on Monday,” Allen head coach Terry Gambill, who celebrated his birthday with a win said. “The word of the week was focus and we were focused, had three great practices this week, our coaching staff did an unbelievable job of game planning, and our players executed the game plan. It’s all about the team.”
The Allen (7-0, 4-0) defense was the story of the night; they were able to hold the high-flying Denton Guyer offense to seven points and 193 yards of offense. Coming into today, the Wildcats were averaging 40 points and 406 yards per game. Guyer has one of the best running back duos in the state in Noah Cain and Myron Mason, and the Eagle defense was able to limit them to 159 yards combined.
“We knew we had to stop the run, and that was their strength, so if we stopped them they would have to throw the football. Our message was win first downs.” Gambill said.
Through the air, Guyer (5-2, 3-1) was 1-6 and that one completion was a 75-yard touchdown pass to Thabo Mwaniki from Luke Stidwell in the second quarter to make it 14-7 Allen. Allen’s first two scores of the games came in the first quarter on a pass from Mitchell Jonke to Mark Richardson, and a 10-yard run by Jonke.
Allen was able to attack the Guyer defense through the air with their two quarterbacks, Jonke and sophomore Grant Tisdale. Jonke, the Brown commit was 17-24 with 255 yards and a touchdown, and Tisdale came and went 5-6 for 50 yards and a touchdown. Tisdale came into the game for one drive in the first half to extend the Allen lead to 21-7. Then Jonke handled the QB position until the fourth quarter.
“We saw on film that their corners were going to take away the deep pass, so we had those intermediates that worked great throughout the game,” Mitchell Jonke said.
“Its always easy to throw when the offensive line protects like they did tonight. I had so much time to throw I think one play I had eight seconds, they just make it so easy.”
The sequence that put this game out of reach, was when Allen scored a touchdown with 28 seconds left in the first half to make it 28-7, then they received the ball coming out of the intermission and in five plays and 55 seconds they scored another touchdown to make it 35-7 and end any Guyer hopes of a comeback.
“This was definitely a big game for us, it was almost like the district championship, with both teams being undefeated,” Jonke said. “The winner of this is going to be the district champions and it was really big game for us and we came out well.”
