North Myrtle Beach scores early, often in rout of St. James

The North Myrtle Beach football team came into Friday night’s game against St. James looking to impose its will on the road. The Chiefs did just that in a 64-0 dominating effort, which saw the visitors jump out to a 33-0 lead after one quarter of play.

North Myrtle Beach (8-1, 2-1 Region VII-AAAA) relied on a heavy dosage of the running game to roll up 475 total yards of offense. With sophomore quarterback Cason McClendon making his first start on the road, the trio of TJ Gore, Kered Class and Nick Vereen made life easy for the offense.

Each running back scored a touchdown in the first quarter, with Gore finding the end zone twice.

“It was just a good team win all around. I was really proud of our effort tonight on both sides of the ball,” North Myrtle Beach coach Blair Hardin said. “I thought our offensive line did a great job of opening up holes up front and our backs ran hard. We had one fumble down in the red zone but we were able to fall on that for a score. Other than that, I thought we played a clean game.”

The Chiefs passed the ball only five times on the night, all in the first half, with McClendon hitting Reece Finch for a 24-yard score in the first quarter. Finch would find the end zone in the second quarter, on a fumble recovery. Kicker Andrew Smith, who struggled with extra points in the first half, hit a 42-yard field goal to bring the North Myrtle Beach lead up to 43-0 at halftime.

“The biggest thing is that we just want to execute well,” Hardin said of his team. “This is an important time of the year, for playoff seeding. I’m proud of my guys for responding tonight. We played physical on both sides of the ball and our offensive line paved the way all night. We have a few running backs that can run the football and they all did a good job complementing each other tonight.”

While the Chief offense made plenty of plays, it was put in position to score by the defense.

In the first half North Myrtle Beach had scoring drives of 24, 29, 26 and 22 yards. St. James finished the game with 48 total yards on offense and zero red zone chances.

In the second half, with a running clock, North Myrtle Beach was able to play reserve players.

Quasin Porter made the most of his playing time, running for 97 yards and two scores in the final two quarters.

For St. James, Jay-Mion Pressley led the way with 15 rushing yards on 16 carries.

North Myrtle Beach will have a week off before taking on Wilson on Nov. 11. Hardin and his team have playoff aspirations and could secure a home game in the first round with a win in the regular-season finale.

“We’ve got to bring our hard hats this week,” he said. “We’ve got to come to work with the mindset that we can improve in a lot of areas, because we can. We have two weeks to get ready for a good football team in Wilson and then hopefully the postseason. Now’s not the time to start looking ahead.”

St. James will play host to Myrtle Beach in its season finale next Friday.

This story was originally published October 28, 2016 at 11:12 PM with the headline "North Myrtle Beach scores early, often in rout of St. James."