BAUXITE -- Malvern Coach J.D. Plumlee got a bit of unsettling news two days before his team was set to open 4A-7 Conference play against Bauxite, but his offensive line found a way to ease his distress.
The Leopards dominated up front, which paved the way for running backs Jalen Dupree and Braylon Watson to have monster outings, as Malvern strolled past the Miners 40-20 on Friday night at The Pit.
The victory stopped a two-game slide for the Leopards (2-2, 1-0), who were forced to play without standout quarterback Cedric Simmons. The junior was sidelined with an apparent leg injury and wasn't able to suit up. But that was only the half of it.
"We got the bad news Wednesday night that he was going to be out," Plumlee said. "You're talking about a kid that hadn't missed a game since he's been at the varsity level, and that goes back to his freshman season. And of course, there wasn't a whole lot that we could do in basically a day of walkthrough.
"So we had a team meeting that same night and basically told the guys that we were going to play some Stanford football in this one."
For Malvern, that meant simply lining up and running the ball right at the Miners on nearly every play.
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Dupree, a sophomore, carried 35 times for 229 yards and 5 touchdowns while Watson, a senior, ran 25 times for 160 yards and 1 touchdown. The duo grounded out all but nine of team's rushing yards.
In fact, the two accounted for almost all of the team's total yards. Malvern attempted only three passes, and Watson completed two of those for 17 yards.
"We challenged them," Plumlee explained. "We knew that that was what we were going to have to do. A lot of what we did was really our base offense. We took a couple of extra offensive linemen, put them in some tight end jerseys and just kind of ran it all night."
Malvern scored touchdowns on six of its eight possessions. On the two series that the Leopards didn't score, they were stopped on fourth-and-1 inside the Miners' 1 while the other drive resulted in a kneel down in the final seconds.
Hunter Ferrell finished 19-of-29 passing for 262 yards with 2 touchdowns and 1 interception, and Braden Arnold caught six passes for 100 yards to help keep Bauxite (2-2, 0-1) in the game for a while. But Malvern's ground attack was simply too much for the Miners to deal with.
"We've just got to get better," Bauxite Coach Caleb Perry said. "[Malvern] was just bigger than us. ... just beat us up running up the middle. It was pretty simple. We've got five, six sophomores starting on defense with two guys over 200 pounds. They just ran it on us."
Dupree scored on runs of 9 and 14 yards in the first quarter to push Malvern out to a 13-0 lead. Bauxite, which struggled for the bulk of the opening half, did pull within 13-6 just before intermission when Ferrell engineered a 14-play, 99-yard drive after the Miners' defense stopped the Leopards at the goal line. The junior hit Roman Muniz in the back of the end zone for a 17-yard score with 41 seconds left in the second.
After Ferrell threw an interception on the first drive of the second half, the team traded touchdowns on the next three possessions, with the Miners' quarterback sandwiching a 1-yard score between a pair of touchdown runs from Dupree – the latter of which was a 43-yard burst. The turning point, however, came following that scoring scamper.
That touchdown with 11:16 left in the fourth gave Malvern a 26-14 lead. The Leopards then got the ball back on the ensuing kickoff when the Bauxite returner fumbled. Six plays later, Dupree's fifth score – a 6-yarder – put Malvern up 33-14.
Ferrell would answer with a 15-yard touchdown strike to Zack Taylor with 5:50 to go in the game, but Watson put the Miners away with a bruising 45-yard score with 3:28 showing.
"I'm just so happy for this young group," Plumlee said. "It's the first week of conference, we're on the road and our quarterback goes down. Our guys were kind of shocked because out there on offense in the second half, there was only one senior. Jalen's a sophomore, big Vinnie Winters, our left tackle, is a sophomore.
"I don't know if [fans] felt the field tilt or not, but we ran left probably 90% of the time behind [Winters]. The defense stepped up when we needed them to as well. So I'm just super, super proud of this team."