Published: Sept. 6, 2014
Owls get run-game boost
Slinger rushes for 292 yards
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Dee Corbitt had lost sight of what was important to the
Slinger Owls football team: his teammates.
When called upon Friday night against West Bend West, he
didn’t disappoint. He had already done enough of that.
Corbitt, a senior, rushed for 133 yards and a touchdown —
all in the second half — as the Owls knocked off the Spartans, 38-13, in the
Wisconsin Little 10 Conference opener for both teams.
Corbitt filled in admirably after starting running back
Jacob Mason was injured on the first play from scrimmage in the second half and
only returned for one more play.
“Dee showed some things tonight,” Slinger coach Bill Jacklin
said of Corbitt. “He said, ‘Let me show what I can do,’ and he definitely
showed us.
“We got a two-headed monster back there now, which I feel
real good about.”
Corbitt was held out of the Aug. 29 game against Whitefish
Bay for team rules violations. He said he missed some practices and showed up
late to practice. He admitted he lost focus of being a good teammate.
So when he got the chance to play, he wasn’t going to let
the opportunity pass him by.
And this was the best way to say he was sorry to his
teammates.
“I wanted to play; I wanted my time to shine,” Corbitt said.
“Tonight I got it and I’m happy.”
“You’ve got to put the team first,” he added.
Mason, who had a good game as well with 121 yards rushing
and two touchdowns, has been hobbled with a left foot injury. He rushed for 109
yards and two touchdowns in the first half.
On the first play from scrimmage in the second half, Mason
gained seven yards. He came off the field hobbling with 11:44 remaining in the
third quarter.
Corbitt was strong right from his first carry. He averaged 7
yards per carry on his first six touches.
Mason, who rushed for 204 yards in the season’s first game,
a victory over Whitnall, stayed on the sideline until there were three minutes
left in the third quarter where he picked up 5 yards on another rush. But
again, he came off the field hobbling. This time, he didn’t return to the game.
He didn’t need to.
“I had a lot of confidence in our team,” Mason said.
“It gives a lot of relief to me that there’s other backs,”
he added. “And with our offensive line, you could put some middle schoolers
back there and they could pick up a lot of yards.”
Slinger pounded its way through West’s defense for 292 yards
rushing. Corbitt and Mason combined for 254 of those yards.
“Our guys up front, they were doing a great job,” Corbitt
said. “You’ve just got to trust your linemen. We’ve got some of the best
linemen in the conference. They showed it tonight.”
Mason entered the game with 281 yards rushing in the
season’s first two games, an average of 140.5.
“Our depth is really good at tailback,” Jacklin said. “Jacob
is obviously a power back; he was our fullback last year, very strong kid. Dee
is also very strong, but he has that burst of speed. It’s a little bit
different.
“It’s great to have a lot of running backs when you’re a
running team.” In the first half, it was a heavy dosing of Mason by the Owls
(2-1, 1-0). Of the Owls’ 30 first-half plays, Mason had 17 touches. The Owls
attempted just four passes in the first half and had no yards through the air.
Where Slinger struggled was third-down conversions. The Owls
were 2-for-12 on third down. However, they were 3-for-3 on fourth down attempts
and two conversions eventually turned into a touchdown. “They beat the
man-to-man matchups,” West coach Jeff Richardson said. “With their style of
offense, we just have to be better than them and we weren’t better than them
tonight.”
The Spartans (2-1, 0-1) hoped to use this game as an
eye-opener for the WLT.
It was a chance to reveal to the conference it was for real
after two nonconference victories against underdogs — Kettle Moraine Lutheran
and Two Rivers.
Slinger was a different kind of opponent. It was a
conference game. But the Owls went to the playoffs last season, losing to
Oshkosh North in Level 1. Oshkosh North went on to reach the state final.
Slinger led that Level 1-playoff game in the fourth quarter.
“To get to the point where we want to, we’ve got to be at
the caliber of Slinger,” Richardson said. “They’re a good program.”
Through three games this season, the Spartans’ defense has
shown struggles to get off the field and get the ball back to the offense.
West managed just 207 yards of total offense, including just
6 yards rushing in the second half, and five of those yards came from Kieran
Conley in the last two minutes of the game.
Patrick Baumann, who had 348 yards rushing in the first two
games, had just 46 yards on 14 carries against the Owls. He had just one carry
for 3 yards in the second half.
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