Since a defeat to Onondaga exactly one season ago, the Bishop Ludden football team has known nothing except victory, in small venues and in large-scale places like the Carrier Dome.
And that win streak now sits at 13, thanks to the Gaelic Knights’ total domination of last Saturday’s game at LaFayette that produced a 50-6 victory over the Lancers.
Through two games, Ludden has posted 91 points, a clear indication that the offense has undergone the transition from Connor Sweeney, Daquan Grobsmith and Wendall Wiliams to its new lineup quite smoothly.
Then again, LaFayette may not qualify as the ideal gauge of one’s quality. To some degree, the Lancers are still recovering from a 2007 season where, combined with Fabius-Pompey, it played up in the Class B West division and got smacked around.
Now in the more reasonable Class C West ranks, the Lancers have a better chance, but are still young and have a lot to catch up on, as evidenced by the 41-8 loss it took to Alexandria Bay in its Sept. 6 opener.
Ludden was not that sympathetic. Instead, it chose this game to showcase that it has not one, but two potential game-breakers in the backfield.
Omar Osbourne, who racked up 214 yards at Cato-Meridian eight days earlier, scored the only points of the first quarter on an 11-yard touchdown run.
That only served as a warm-up, though, for a second-quarter blitz where Ludden used 28 points to put the game away, launched by John Rooney throwing a 21-yard TD pass to Mark DeAngelis early in the period.
Devin White, Osbourne’s mate in the backfield, ran 41 yards for one touchdown and 25 yards for another. Overall, he had 164 yards on 12 carries, which has to make every future Ludden opponent worry because White proved just as capable of the big play as Osbourne.
Of course, Osbourne wasn’t done, either. On his way to 93 yards on 10 carries, he added two more touchdowns, on runs of 27 and 44 yards, giving him seven TD’s for the season. Mike Works added a third-quarter TD from nine yards out, and Rooney’s two-point pass to E.J. Beauford helped Ludden reach the 50 mark.
For its home opener in Geddes Friday night, Ludden will face Port Byron at 7 p.m. So far, the Panthers are 0-2, having taken losses to Hannibal and Cato-Meridian.
