Vikings bottle up MP

Published 11:31 pm Friday, October 14, 2011

LAKE STEVENS — While the Lake Stevens Vikings earned no worse than a tie for the Wesco North title, it’s safe to say they have loftier goals.

The Vikings defeated Marysville Pilchuck 38-7 Friday night to secure the No. 1 playoff seed in the Wesco North. Lake Stevens can claim the division ti

tle outright with a victory next week over Stanwood.

“It feels good, it feels very good,” Lake Stevens coach Tom Tri said. “I’m cautious about saying that though. We heard it, it’s awesome, it has been a while, but we want to win some playoff games. So Wesco North champs is just our first goal. We want to see if we can’t host a few playoff games and see if we can’t do some damage this year and try to get down to the Tacoma Dome.”

That could be where Lake Stevens is headed if the Vikings continue to get individual performances like the ones they received Friday from quarterback Jake Nelson and running back Shae Giddens.

Nelson completed 17 of his 20 pass attempts for 184 yards and two touchdowns, but the senior quarterback did nearly as much damage on the ground, rushing for 97 yards and two touchdowns on 11 carries.

After a scoreless first quarter, Nelson got the Lake Stevens offense going in the second period, scoring on runs of 6 and 17 yards, but it was what he did in the final seconds of the first half that created the separation on the scoreboard. Nelson scrambled to his right on a broken play, then found receiver Christian Gasca coming back across the field. After Gasca caught the ball, he beat the MP defense to the end zone to give the Vikings a 21-7 halftime lead.

“He’s just calm cool, collected, full of confidence and doesn’t let a mistake affect him,” Tri said of Nelson. “And he is an emotional kid, he really is. I have seen him grow up so much in the last year and half or two years.”

Gasca caught seven passes for 90 yards.

If Nelson wasn’t beating the Vikings with his feet, Giddens was. The senior running back rushed for 191 yards on 19 carries.

But even more impressive than the offense, was the Lake Stevens defense. The Vikings held the potent Tomahawks rushing attack more than 100 yards below its season average. Senior linebacker Korey Young led the charge with 19 tackles.

“We were well prepared, a lot of film,” Young said. “I thought the boys really stepped it up and realized that Marysville is a smash-mouth kind of football team and we had to bring our physicality.”

Nelson said the defense deserved the praise.

“Our D stepped it up tonight,” he said. “They played great and stopped the Wing-T, the run. They have been running all over everybody pretty much all year.”

“Our kids our tough, they understand the game,” Tri said. “We are going to try to take away teams ability to run the ball. We did that tonight. We gave up a couple passes, we gave up a couple passes in the Monroe game, but when you talk about the two best running teams in the league, I would say it’s Marysville and Monroe. … We held Monroe to (less than 80) yards net rushing and tonight I don’t know what Marysville had, but it wasn’t a whole lot.”

Tri was right, it wasn’t a whole lot, 148 yards to be exact, well below MP’s average of nearly 300.

The Tomahawks were without running back Andre Pina, who did not play and wasn’t seen on the sidelines. Marysville Pilchuck coach Brandon Carson didn’t have much to say on the issue after the game. “He’s no longer with us, I don’t want to talk about it,” Carson said.

Jake Luton led the Tomahawks’ offensive attack, completing seven of his 14 passes for 143 yards, one touchdown and one interception.

Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Read his live blogs at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/prepzone. Contact him at aaronlommers@gmail.com and follow him on twitter @aaronlommers.