De La Salle holds St. Charles Catholic scoreless to remain unbeaten

LAPLACE – Another week, another impressive win by the De La Salle Cavaliers.

Quarterback Julien Gums rushed for 164 yards and three touchdowns and the Cavaliers defense surrendered just 127 yards of offense while forcing two turnovers in a 28-0 win Friday night over St. Charles Catholic.

Always aiming to be better, Cavaliers head coach Ryan Manale was more focused on his team’s season high eight penalties than the domination of a quality team on the road.

“We’ll take (the win),” said Manale. “This is the most penalized we’ve been all year so we really have to go look back on film so we can improve, see what we were doing wrong. But the defense creating turnovers and helping us out by doing a heck of a job and my coaching staff doing a great job helped us get it done.”

Gums, a Nicholls commitment, savored his team’s latest triumph.

“This is amazing,” said Gums. “We won the first quarter with a lot of heart. We’ve been doubted so much on social media, (saying) that we wouldn’t be able to come out and beat these big teams but we’ve been pulling them out and I’m just so proud of my team.”

While his entire team came to play, Gums set the tone from the get go when he ran the ball 59 yards to the house on the opening play of the game to put the Cavaliers up 7-0.

In the second quarter, it was running back Kendall Collins who moved the Cavaliers, putting together 25 of his teams 44 yards on a drive capped off by a three-yard stroll into the end zone to give De La Salle a two possession lead.

Even with time winding down, De La Salle continued to grind out yards and make key plays.

The Cavs were facing 4^th and 15 late in the first half following a false start penalty when Gums pulled off a 16 yard run to extend the drive. After another long run by Gums of 14 yards, the senior would march in for his second score of the evening with 12 seconds remaining before the halftime horn.

Gums would add a 26 yard scoring run in the third quarter to give De La Salle 28 points. After that it was up to Collins and running back Ryan Hammerick to run the ball and kill the clock while the Cavs defense held the Comet’s scoreless and preserve the victory.

St. Charles Catholic, despite making several plays early, ultimately proved their own worst enemy with a fumble and an interception in De La Salle territory in the first half.

“I think we have to go back to the drawing board,” Comets head coach Frank Monica said. “We just got our butts kicked and we didn’t play very well. We struggled at the quarterback position without (Lloyd) Nash. Give them credit, they had a good plan, but our offense couldn’t take any pressure off of our defense. But we’ve got one game left next week and we’ll review our weaknesses tonight.

De La Salle (8-0, 4-0) will face Donaldsonville on the road to close out their season next week while the Comets (7-2, 3-1) close out the season against St. James at home.