The Bridge City Cardinals fought beak and claw Friday night and came away with a 20-12 victory over the Buna Cougars to remain undefeated in 2023.
The Cardinals and Cougars battled back and forth throughout the contest, neither offense finding much traction and neither defense willing to bend or break. Both offenses struggled to find consistency, as each defense held the other team to under 200 yards of total offense
The Cardinals struck first thanks to a short field following an interception by Bridge City defender Hunter Newton. However, it only took the Cards offense three plays to score.
Facing third and 17 from the Cougars 40 yard line, quarterback Hutch Bearden connected with Abraham Mungia for a 40-yard scoring strike and 7-0 lead with 7:16 remaining in the first quarter.
Buna (1-1) answered the Cardinals scoring drive with an eight play, 88-yard scoring drive of its own.
With the ball at the Bridge City 35-yard line, Cougars quarterback Toby Marse found Jacob Johnson open for a touchdown pass. The two-point pass attempt failed and the Cards still lead, 7-6.
To start the second quarter, the Cougars defense sacked Bearden to force and recover the fumble deep in Cardinals territory. On third and 14 from the 19 yard line, Marse threw another touchdown pass, this time to Kayden Dill, to Buna on top 12-7 following the failed two point conversion.
It was Bridge City’s turn to respond and that they did. The Cardinals started the drive on the Buna 40-yard line thanks to a huge kickoff return and only needed four plays to put the ball in the endzone. Bearden scored on a four-yard run to the put the Cardinals ahead 13-12 in the middle of the second quarter.
Both teams struggled with penalties throughout the contest as both squads combined for 23 penalties for more than 180 yards. Combine that with stingy defenses unwilling to give up big plays and yards were hard to come by for most of the evening.
Interim Bridge City football coach Chad Landry and Buna football coach Kevin Terrier both have extensive backgrounds as baseball coaches for their respective schools, but you might not ever know that based on the performance of each team so far this season.
Landry and his coaching staff have the offense and defense vastly improved two games into the 2023 football season, as the offense is already averaging 23 points per game and the defense is allowing 10.5 points per game. This is much improved over 2022 averages of 6.7 points per game on offense and allowing more than 39 points per game defensively.
The Cardinals received the second-half kickoff and only needed seven plays to march 62 yards for the touchdown as Bearden tossed a 5-yard pass to receiver Gavin Bodin for a 20-12 lead following the Victor Hernandez extra point. The big play of the drive was a 27-yard run by Merik Aras.
From that point, the Bridge City defense continually harassed Marse each time he rolled out to attempt a pass and kept running back Johnson contained to secure the non-district victory.
Bridge City (2-0) returns to Orange County next Friday to face Little Cypress-Mauriceville (1-1) at Bear Stadium. LC-M lost 33-6 to the West Orange-Stark Mustangs (2-0) on Friday night.
Social Media