The Norwalk Lancers will challenge the St. Genevieve Valiants at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. Norwalk is strutting in with some offensive muscle as they've averaged 37.6 points per game this season.
Norwalk's offense will try to repeat the strong performance it gave last Thursday, when they got past Lynwood's usually-dominant defense. Norwalk took down Lynwood 33-15. Given the Lancers' advantage in MaxPreps' California football rankings (they are ranked 327th, while the Knights are ranked 656th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
This one was won in the trenches and the lion's share of the credit has to go to Ezra Meuller and Diego Cerritos. Meuller rushed for 166 yards and a touchdown while picking up 7.2 yards per carry while Cerritos rushed for 90 yards and four touchdowns. Meuller is crushing it when it comes to rushing yards: he's rushed for at least 104 every time he's taken the field this season.
Norwalk was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 284 rushing yards. That's a new trend for them: they were averaging 384 rushing yards per game earlier this season, but in their last five games they've averaged 310.5.
Norwalk's defense made their presence known, laying out the QB five times. Leading the way was Onosai Faamatau with two sacks. He also set a new season high mark in total tackles with 12.
Meanwhile, St. Genevieve came tearing into last Thursday's contest with six straight wins (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 18.5 points) and they left with even more momentum. They breezed by the Tigers to the tune of 51-0. Considering the Valiants have won five matches by more than 25 points this season, Thursday's blowout was nothing new.
The critical scores for St. Genevieve came from Luke Paoillo, Michael Wynn, Samar Varela, Ramario Rivas, Andy Carballo, Jaylin Burt, and Jayden Lepley.
St. Genevieve pushed their record up to 8-1 with the victory, which was their fourth straight on the road. They've dominated over that stretch too, winning by an average of 42.2 points. As for Norwalk, they are on a roll lately: they've won six of their last seven matchups, which provided a nice bump to their 8-2 record this season.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
