If ever a regular season provided a glorified tune-up, the Cazenovia football team experienced it in the dredges of the Class B East division.
No one in seven weeks of action even came close to giving the state Class B no. 7-ranked Lakers a challenge, a trend that many thought would stop when Cazenovia played its only Friday-night game of the regular season at South Jefferson.
But the Spartans, like six foes before them, fell in quick order to the relentless Lakers, and the result was a 40-0 destruction that gave a definitive conclusion to the team’s awesome regular season.
This was Cazenovia’s fourth shutout in five weeks. It has blasted its seven victims by a combined margin of 317-21, a mark made even more impressive by the fact that its starters have sat out large portions of each game when the outcome was in hand.
No was so sure when the night began that this could keep going. Not only was South Jefferson 5-1, it had given these same Lakers a big scare in last year’s Section III Class B semifinal before Cazenovia won to advance to the Carrier Dome.
Remembering all this, the Lakers went to Adams and, within minutes, had assured its followers that no late drama would be necessary.
Moving the ball with ease in the first quarter, Cazenovia got on the board when Aaron Race scored from four yards out. Minutes later, Brandon Moyer made it 14-0 when he broke free from Spartan defenders and rumbled 52 yards to the end zone.
Naturally, the Lakers’ imposing defense added the exclamation point to this early romp, as Chris Nourse stepped in front of a Jay Crast pass and returned it 36 yards for a touchdown.
Cazenovia didn’t need to throw the ball much. It gained 298 yards on the ground, many of them to set up Justin Hubbard’s pair of TD runs in the second quarter. Race also threw a 13-yard scoring pass to Ben Dewan.
Moyer’s long TD run accounted for nearly half his team-high 119 yards. He and Hubbard (69 yards) both had 10 carries, while Brian Bartlett got the tough gains in the middle as he ran 13 times for 71 yards.
Two days later, it was confirmed the Cazenovia would meet Solvay in Saturday’s opening round of the Section III Class B playoffs at 1:30 at Buckley-Volo Field.
The Bearcats won eight consecutive Class B West titles from 1998 to 2005, but fell back this year with a 3-4 regular-season mark. A win here would put the Lakers in the semifinals next weekend against Homer or South Jefferson.
