MIZE &045; It was bad enough Mize had a pretty good idea of how to defend the Cathedral passing game.

But another idea came to fruition Friday night &045; the Bulldogs’ running game pounded away like a sledgehammer.

That, too, was the worry of CHS coaches before the game, and the Bulldogs’ 318 yards rushing &045; 221 from tiny Jasper Ducksworth &045; was just as difficult trying to defend as it is reading. The Bulldogs corrected their own mistakes from the first half to pound out a 28-14 win over the Green Wave to sit atop the Region 4-1A standings.

&uot;We knew it was going to be tough to stop them,&uot; Cathedral head coach Ken Beesley Sr. said. &uot;That little No. 20 (Ducksworth) is tough. He’s not fast, but he’s quick and strong. That’s what we was afraid was going to happen. We weren’t able to stop him running the ball. They wore us down.&uot;

The Bulldogs had the size advantage on the Green Wave on both sides of the ball, but it was their offensive line that kept pounding away. At times Cathedral’s defense came up with big stops and held Ducksworth in check, but the second half the 5-6 sophomore back scooted through the defense enough to keep the clock and the Cathedral defense moving backward.

Mize got a late score at the end of the first half for a 14-7 lead, but its first drive of the second half set the tone.

The Bulldogs drove 64 yards on 12 running plays in nearly six minutes before Ducksworth finished it off with a 2-yard touchdown run for a 21-7 lead.

&uot;That’s what we wanted to do,&uot; Mize head coach Kenny Robinson said. &uot;We wanted to run the ball, take it out of their hands and make it a short game. That’s what our game plan was. We were lucky to be able to do that as much as we were.&uot;

The Green Wave had some momentum later in the second half when it was finally able to connect on a pass play. Quarterback Turner Smith and the wide-open Cathedral attack was grounded for most of the game as he completed 10 of 24 passes for 125 yards.

Eighty of those, however, came when Smith connected on an 80-yard pass to Garrett Jones for a touchdown with 11:00 left in the fourth quarter to cut the lead to 21-14.

&uot;I said they would have to have a good defensive scheme, and that’s exactly what they had,&uot; Smith said. &uot;They must have watched films, and their coaches must have really knew what they were doing. They had our number tonight. We had that one pass to Jones. When we would run, they gobbled that up pretty well.&uot;

The Bulldogs went with three down linemen for most of the game, and the eight men in pass coverage gave Smith and the passing game problems. He didn’t complete a pass for positive yardage until near the end of the first quarter, and when the Wave had a shot late in the game to slice into the lead the Bulldogs’ coverage covered the receivers like a blanket.

The Green Wave offense had a bad break on its second play when receiver Michael Blain went out with a broken ankle.

&uot;We were anxious to see what they were going to run,&uot; Beesley said. &uot;We’ll probably have to run the ball a little bit more if people are going to go eight deep. With the three down linemen they had, it made it tough. But we’re going to stick with this offense. We’re committed to it. I think the whole problem was their speed. That’s the first time we’ve run into that. That took away some of our passing game.&uot;

The Green Wave abandoned its customary spread formation midway through the second quarter to get its first score of the game. After firing blanks out of the passing game from the start, Smith and the offense lined in a tight set and got a 15-yard run from Jackson to start the drive.

Three plays later the spread set netted a 17-yard pass from Smith to Andrew Ellard, and Elllard ran in from 7 yards out for a score on the next play to tie the score at 7-7 with 6:36 left.

&uot;He (Smith) throws the ball so far we weren’t going to get much of a rush on him anyway,&uot; Robinson said. &uot;We weren’t going to waste any men up front. We changed some things up defensively. Even though we gave him time to throw, we had things covered most of the night.&uot;

A bad shotgun snap on Cathedral’s next drive put the offense back on its own 2, and the Bulldogs took over after a punt at the Cathedral 32. Ducksworth had the ball three times on the drive, and his third resulted in an 11-yard touchdown run with :39 seconds left in the first half for a 14-7 Mize lead.

Ducksworth, just a sophomore, scored the first time he touched the ball on the Bulldogs’ fourth play of the game when he took it 59 yards to the house for a 7-0 lead with 8:43 left in the first.