Ground game, staunch defense lead Marquette over Annawan-Wetherfield

Caden Eller’s TD catch, 2 interceptions help Crusaders past Titans

Marquette's Caden Eller makes a wide-open catch against Wethersfield on Friday, Sept. 16, 2022 at Gould Stadium in Ottawa.

OTTAWA – The Marquette Crusaders are not above playing a little more finesse brand of football in mixing the run and pass, as they’ve demonstrated with great success so far this football season.

But when the situation demands it, as it did in a 24-7 win against Annawan-Wethersfield on Friday night, it can play ground-and-pound on both sides of the ball with the best of them.

The Crusaders very nearly took the entire night off in the passing game – with one notable exception – to muscle their way to 45 runs for 258 rush yards, a 33 minutes, 18 seconds to 14:42 advantage in time of possession and a victory over the Titans at Gould Stadium.

Tommy Durdan ran 21 times for 96 yards, Jurnee Reed added 19 carries for 83 and Logan Nelson chipped in with nine tries for 62 yards to account for most of the Cru offense. However, Caden Eller and Alex Graham added two crucial plays – hooking up for a 49-yard touchdown pass in the closing seconds of the second quarter. He followed that after the Titans closed to within 17-7 with a keeper by Graham on fourth-and-1 that led to the hosts’ final TD to keep the visitors at bay.

Couple those efforts with a defense that limited the potent Titans offense to a mere 45 total yards on the day and there’s little wonder why Marquette is a perfect 4-0 on the season.

Annawan-Wetherfield – a team that led the Cru 8-7 in the “others receiving votes” portion of the Associated Press’s most recent Class 1A poll – falls to 3-1.

“I don’t have a preference run or pass, we just want to win,” Marquette coach Tom Jobst said. “Whatever it takes to do that, when you get into the flow of the game, you just go where it takes you. You see what’s going on and you work at it. Against different teams, you do different things … When you’re playing against speed, you have to go right at it rather than try to run around it, and they made us work for everything we got tonight, just like we expected.

“The defense was very good tonight. The kids are really focused on playing good fundamental defense … That’s the fourth really good football team we’ve played this season and there’s more to come.”

Marquette flashed a little speed of its own in the first quarter when Nelson capped the first series of the game with a 49-yard TD run that, coupled with the first of three Sam Mitre PAT kicks, made it 7-0.

The defenses then took over, the Cru getting the first of two pass interceptions by Eller and a batted fourth-down pass by Vinnie Battestelli ending A-W’s first two possessions.

But with the second quarter winding down, on the first play after a short Titans punt to midfield, Graham fired a play-action pass deep to Eller for a 49-yard TD with just 43.9 seconds left before the break.

From there, the Cru were content to just run, run, run and eventually held on to the ball for 19:41 of the 24 second-half minutes. Mitre booted through a 22-yard field goal, his first of the season, to make it 17-0.

Though Annawan-Wetherfield answered early in the fourth when Zeb Rashid took a middle screen pass from quarterback Dillon Horrie 26 yards for their only score of the game, the Cru responded.

Jobst trusted his quarterback, his line and his defense by having Graham run a fourth-and-1 keeper at their own 40, setting up Graham’s clinching nine-yard score on a rollout with 5:06 to play.

Eller’s second pick on the very next play from scrimmage finished the defense’s fine day.

“I’m really, really proud of the way our guys battled. Our defense played lights out,” A-W coach Tony Gripp said. “Outside of a mental hiccup on their second score, we played really well. It’s a 17-7 game and who knows what happens. No. 33 (Eller) made a couple of incredible catches for interceptions and we couldn’t get anything going on offense.”