Published: September 22, 2008 10:50 am      

Mings: Rams capable of much more

By JEREMY HALL

jeremy.hall@register-news.com

MT. VERNON — Despite averaging 30.3 points a game over the last three weeks and winning its last two games by a combined 42 points, Mt. Vernon coach Dan Mings believes the best is yet to come from his team.

The Rams ran past Althoff 42-21 on Friday in their South Seven Conference opener to even their record at 2-2. Mt. Vernon amassed 368 yards of total offense in the game, and rushed for an average of 8.2 yards per carry.

Nonetheless, Mings said his team is capable of more.

“We still haven’t played great,” Mings said after the game. “We’ve played pretty good football but we haven’t played great football. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. [This] week they need to come out and play great football.”

Mt. Vernon plays at Marion on Friday. The Wildcats lost 36-7 to Cahokia in a weather-delayed game on Saturday.

Mings said his team will need to buckle down in order to keep up with Marion.

“We can’t have those long passes,” he said. “We can’t have them running that inside counter on us and making us look silly. There’s stuff that we’re going to have to do this week in order to have a chance because Marion is a little bit better football team than Althoff. They execute very well doing the same type of stuff. We’ve got our hands full.”

RUSH-ING GAME: Spend some time with Mings, and you know asking him to single out individual players is the equivalent of receiving dental work. But on Friday, he couldn’t resist praising the effort of junior offensive lineman Ashton Rush, who helped pave the way for the offense’s success.

“Ashton Rush has turned into a leader for us out there,” Mings said. “He’s doing a lot of things, calling line schemes. The last two weeks he has been a dominant blocker for us. I hate talking about individual kids but he is sticking out in my mind so much.”

Mings also was asked to talk about the seven touchdowns scored by senior Darrell Mitchell over the last two weeks.

Mitchell scored four touchdowns — including a kickoff return for a score — against Triad and found paydirt three times against the Crusaders on Friday.

“Anybody that saw that super-sectional run last year in basketball, you know that Darrell Mitchell is a hard worker,” Mings said. “He comes to practice every day and works hard. He comes to the games and works hard. That’s the kind of kid that you want on your football team.”

Mitchell’s 94-yard kickoff return at Triad was three yards shy of the Rams record for a kickoff return, 97 yards by Dontrell Black against Belleville East in 2006. Ben Doggan ran a kickoff back 95 yards for a touchdown against Centralia in 1979.

NO SWEAT: When Torrey Pollard fumbled the ball while stretching for extra yards against Althoff on Friday, Mings wasted little time calling his number again. Pollard ran the ball on the next offensive play by the Rams, and wound up with 65 yards on nine carries.

“A fumble is not life or death,” said Mings. “He’s a good running back. He’s a good kid that comes to work every day. The rest of the night he kept two paws on that thing. He wasn’t going to let it go.”

IMITATION: When Althoff ran back the opening kickoff of the second half back for a touchdown against the Rams, the play looked eerily similar to what Mt. Vernon had done in its previous three weeks.

And for good reason.

“They saw our return on film,” said Mings. “They stole it. It’s a pretty prolific kickoff return that we’re using.

They used the same thing right back at us so we’ve got to find some way to defend what we do on the kickoffs.”