The Lakewood Lancers have put their fate in the hands of quarterback Gevani McCoy and that looked like the best option on Friday night in a 40-19 Moore League win over visiting Jordan on Friday.
McCoy has come alive in league play and scored five touchdowns against the Panthers. The junior had touchdown passes to Ernie Cartagena and Anthony Alvarez. He also had touchdown runs of seven, 25 and 11 yards.
“We’ve turned Gio loose here in league,” Lakewood coach Scott Meyer said of McCoy’s running ability. “He has really good vision and a natural knack of finding the hole. He kind of sets up the run with his patience behind the blockers.”
McCoy and the Lakewood offense had been struggling against good completion during the preseason, but the addition of the run-pass-option play with running back James Voorhies has let McCoy get loose in the backfield.
“It’s a new thing we just put in and I love it,” McCoy said. “I like getting out of the pocket.”
McCoy finished with 316 all-purpose yards, and 166 of those yards came on 12 rushes.
“Headed into league we knew that Gio is probably the best runner we have on the team so we wanted to find some ways we could create some room for him to run,” Meyer said. “In the last two weeks he’s done a great job doing that.”
Last week in the league opener at Cabrillo, McCoy had 144 yards passing, 150 yards rushing, and four total touchdowns in the Lancer victory.
“It’s just great,” McCoy said of finding success. “We’ve been playing really good competition and just kept working really hard. We’ve been waiting for this. We were playing great competition so I knew this was coming.”
Jordan was able to tie the score 7-7 early in the second quarter on the first of two Jordan Wofford rushing touchdowns. However, McCoy and Voorhies put together a quick four-play scoring drive that were all designed RPO plays. McCoy capped it with his first of three rushing scores.
Despite shooting itself in the foot with mistakes and penalties, Lakewood was able to take a 21-7 lead into halftime thanks to a Travis Perryman interception returned for a touchdown in the last minute of the first half.
The Panthers (3-2, 0-2) host Compton next week while Lakewood (3-3, 2-0) hosts Millikan in the Battle Of The Blueprint rivalry with the Hamilton Trophy on the line.
“We have to work harder than ever this week,” Meyer said. “Millikan is a really good team and we’ve got to have a great week of practice, clean up the penalties and the mistakes we made on our own.”
