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Mehlville Opens Districts with Loss to Junior Bills

SLUH's Terek Hawkins ran for 221 yards in the Jr. Bills' 38-0 win over the Panthers on Friday night.

Led by senior Terek Hawkins’ 221 rushing yards and 4 touchdowns, the St. Louis University High Junior Billikens shut out the Mehlville Panthers 38-0 Friday night at Mehlville.

Hawkins carried the ball 27 times and averaged 8.2 yards per carry for the Jr. Bills. SLUH improved to 5-3 and has won four games in a row.

The Panthers dropped to 4-4 overall (4-3 Suburban West Conference). The Jr. Bills snapped Mehlville's three-game winning streak. SLUH has defeated Mehlville four consecutive times.

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SLUH is now 1-0 in District 2 action, while Mehlville is 0-1. The Panthers will need a bounce-back effort next week when they travel to Lindbergh (5-3). The Flyers were defeated 30-13 by De Smet (7-1) in the other District 2 game. Mehlville will play host to De Smet in the regular season finale on Oct. 28.

The Jr. Bills jumped on Mehlville early. In the game’s first play from scrimmage, SLUH senior QB Trevor McDonagh found senior WR Mitch Klug down the right sideline for a 59-yard pickup. Three players later, Hawkins ran for a 3-yard score to put the Jr. Bills up 7-0 a minute and a half into the game.

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Things went from bad to worse for the Panthers. On Mehlville’s first offensive play from scrimmage, senior QB Jeff White’s pitch missed his intended target, and SLUH recovered the fumble. It was the first of three Mehlville turnovers.

The Panther defense forced the Jr. Bills to go three-and-out on their ensuing possession. SLUH’s Dan Tlapek booted a 32-yard field goal to give the Jr. Bills a 10-0 advantage with 9:19 left in the first quarter.

After Mehlville’s next drive stalled, Hawkins ripped off another huge run, this one for 58 yards. On the very next play, Hawkins scored from 11 yards out, and SLUH held a 17-0 lead with 5:38 left in the opening quarter.

Mehlville coach Eric Meyer said his team dug too deep of a hole to come back from.

“I think it comes down to coaching,” Meyer said. “I didn’t have them prepared to play this week, and it’s a good football team. Things like that happen, and we couldn’t recover.”

Mehlville tried to mount a comeback late in the first quarter, as senior defensive tackle Terrell Ursery forced a fumble and then recovered it to give the Panthers great field position. But the SLUH defense forced a three-and-out.

Hawkins extended the Jr. Bills’ lead on their next possession. Hawkins scored his third TD of the game on an 11-yard run with 10:44 to go in the second quarter.

White, who was 4 of 12 for 22 yards, was intercepted on a third-and-7 play by SLUH’s Stefan Sansone. Hawkins punched it in from 4 yards out to make it 31-0.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” Mehlville junior safety Lawrence Krabbe said. “We weren’t ready to play football, and we got out there and they took the best of us. They scored a lot of points really fast. We just never got back in the game.”    

McDonagh, who was 5 of 8 for 112 yards, threw a 4-yard TD to Klug with 0:22 left in the second quarter for the final score of the game.

“(We made) big mistakes that we couldn’t bounce back from, and they capitalized on them,” Mehlville junior RB Jarrath Foster said. “A bad week at practice, and we made the same mistakes that we made all week.”

Meyer said the Panther offense, which has averaged 19.5 points per game this season, struggled to keep drives alive.

“We need to put plays together,” Meyer said. “We had a couple of plays and then we faltered – we had big losses. We can’t have that. We’ve got to keep moving the ball.”

The Mehlville defense will try to build off a second half in which they shut down the Jr. Bills, albeit against SLUH’s backups. The Panthers were led by linebackers Matt Ladd and Dan Kerckhoff, who had eight and seven tackles, respectively.

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