[09/28/02]BOGUE CHITTO The St. Aloysius Flashes seemed a little sluggish Friday night against Bogue Chitto. Sluggish in the same way that a freight train or a Mack truck is before it gets up to full speed.

Greg Smith rushed for 121 yards and four touchdowns, and Michael Head added 97 yards on the ground as St. Al improved to 5-0 (3-0 Region 4-1A) with a 38-7 win.

The Flashes were helped by four turnovers and 105 yards in penalties by Bogue Chitto (1-4, 1-2), which had four personal fouls among 12 penalties.

“I accused the kids of being flat in the beginning. And you’re not going to be sky-high for every ballgame. But we played well,” St. Al coach Jim Taylor said.

St. Al converted two Bogue Chitto fumbles including one on a muffed punt into a 13-0 lead less than four minutes into the game. St. Al’s two scoring drives covered only 14 and 17 yards.

Quarterback Chad Cox ran 14 yards one play after the muffed punt to make it 7-0, and Smith scored his first touchdown from 1 yard out to make it 13-0 with 8:20 to play in the opening quarter.

Bogue Chitto answered back with about 3 1/2 minutes left in the first quarter when Michael Blackwell found Lange Porter on a fade pattern on third-and-17 from the Bogue Chitto 42.

Lange caught the ball behind one St. Al defender, juked another, and went 58 yards for the touchdown to cut it to 13-7.

That was the last hurrah for Bogue Chitto’s offense, however. Blackwell was 5-for-8 passing for 124 yards in the first half, but St. Al made adjustments and shut down the passing game in the second.

Bogue Chitto was held to only 28 rushing yards in the first half, and disrupted any momentum it gained throughout the game with penalties and fumbles. The Bobcats fumbled six times and lost four.

“Offensively, I thought we moved the ball on them at will. We’d just get down there in their territory and turn it over,” Bogue Chitto coach Gareth Sartin said. “I think the game was a lot closer than the score. If we’d have been able to eliminate some of our turnovers and mistakes it would have been a whole different ballgame.”

After Blackwell’s touchdown pass, St. Al came back with a 10-play, 79-yard drive capped by Smith’s 2-yard run to make it 21-7. Cass Dodgen added a 34-yard field goal with six seconds left in the first half to pad the lead to 24-7, and the Flashes steadily pulled away in the second half.

Smith scored on runs of 12 and 2 yards in the third quarter as St. Al crawled out to a 38-7 lead and put the game away.

“We ran the ball well, and I have no complaints, whether we scored on turnovers or penalties,” Taylor said.

The win put the Flashes at 5-0, and on the fast track to being unbeaten when they face reigning region champion Mize in two weeks. It also put St. Al a step closer to reaching the playoffs for the first time in six seasons.