Amherst cruises past Liberty in Bedford

BEDFORD — After a scoreless first quarter, Amherst got its offense rolling as the Lancers scored 19 unanswered points in the second quarter and cruised to a 47-6 victory over Liberty in a Seminole District football game Saturday.

“Give Liberty all the credit in the world, they had a solid game plan and the kids were very aggressive” said Lancers coach Cecil Phillips. “It took us a while to get our motor going, but we found some things that were going to work for us and made some adjustments on the sideline.”

The biggest play of the first half was also the last play of the first half.

Amherst (7-1, 3-1 Seminole), leading 13-0, took possession on its own 43 with 1:55 left until halftime. Lancers quarter-back Anthony Rose engineered an 8-play drive that ended with a 5-yard touchdown pass to tight end Taylor Grubbs with no time left on the clock.

The biggest contribution Rose made was keeping everyone calm as the clock was running down after he was stopped on a keeper at the five.

With no time outs left, Rose got the Lancers lined up and got the snap off on the scoring play with about two ticks left.

The kick failed but the damage was done, and the Lancers took a 19-0 lead into halftime.

“That was a momentum boost,” Phillips said. “We really executed our two-minute offense well and Anthony kept great poise right there.”

Said Minutemen coach Chris Watts: “We had some opportunities, we just didn’t take advantage of. They are a good foot-ball team and that last touchdown we let them score before the half was big.”

Liberty (5-3, 2-2) managed just one first down in the first half and had 28 yards of offense.

“The defense played extremely well,” Phillips said. “They kept us in the game in the first half when we were having a lit-tle difficulty moving the ball.”

Amherst took the second-half kickoff and drove 60 yards to take a 26-0 lead on Jamal Glover’s 7-yard run.

The Minutemen answered with their best drive of the night, going 55 yards and scoring on fourth-and-nine from the Lancers’ 24 when 6-foot-6 Charlton Payne ran a post pattern and out-jumped two defensive backs in the end zone.

But it wasn’t enough as Amherst scored 21 unanswered points to end the game.

“The biggest thing is we have to learn from this,” Watts said. “Coming into the game I don’t think we had confidence that we were going to beat them. Our goal now is to get them to believe again and respond in the last two games.”