Cats cross river with win

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Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen Dalton junior running back Tre Beck (24) led the Cats rushing attack, which combined for more than 400 yards on the ground in the 55-0 win over Murray County on Friday in Chatsworth.

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September 4, 2010

Beck rushes for 230 yards and four TDs

By Chris Whitfield chriswhitfield@daltoncitizen.com The Dalton Daily Citizen Sat Sep 04, 2010, 12:51 AM EDT

CHATSWORTH — Coming off of last week’s loss to Calhoun in the season opener, the Dalton Catamounts wanted to deliver a message to the rest of Region 7-3A.

Don’t count the Cats out yet.

Junior running back Tre Beck sliced and diced his way to 230 yards and four touchdowns on 19 carries, and the Dalton defense earned its Monday Moonpies with a resounding 55-0 victory over the Indians at Murray Field.

“Tonight was not about Murray County,” Dalton coach Matt Land said after recording his first win as a head coach. “This was about and for us. We had some personal benchmarks and some things that we needed to know about ourselves.”

The Catamounts realized that they can run the football, especially after being held to less than 160 yards of offense in their loss to Calhoun last week. Against Murray County, Dalton rolled up 414 yards of rushing offense and finished with 471 yards of total offense.

“We came out here tonight to let everyone know what this team is about,” Beck said. “I think that we will be fine. Our offensive line did well, and we should be pretty good this year.”

Dalton improves to 1-1 on the year with the win, while Murray County falls to 0-2. While the two teams are both members of Region 7-3A, they are in different sub-regions.

The game was told by the numbers. While Murray County was at times able to move the ball effectively between the 20s behind the passing and spread option attack steered by Indians quarterback Taylor Patterson, the Cat defense clamped down when they had to. Dalton turned away four fourth-down attempts in their own territory as Murray failed to get the break through play it needed, especially in the first half.

The Cats, however, were able to score almost at will and in infinite varieties. Dalton scored fast, scored on long, sustained drives and pretty much had its way against a Murray County defense that looked just a step slow most of the night. Dalton wasted little time, scoring on its first possession and went to score on seven out its next eight possessions. The only thing that stopped the Cats was halftime.

Beck scored on a 21-yard run with 8:40 left in the first half, and he was off to the races for the rest of the night. His other scoring runs came on a 1-yard plunge, a 14-yard burst and a 48-yard run that didn’t see an Indian within arms length the entire way. Dalton also proved it could pound the ball in addition to scoring in bursts. A 14-play, 75-yard drive that straddled the end of the first and beginning of the second quarters was followed by an 11-play drive that went 80 yards.

“People got to see tonight that we are going to be a physical team,” Land said. “One of the things that you look for in our defense is that bend but don’t break mentality. We don’t have a defense that is going to overpower a whole lot of people, but can they bend and not break.”

Big plays were the problem for the Dalton defense last week, and Land said that was a specific point of emphasis in practice this past week.

“That was my challenge to the defense tonight — eliminate the big plays,” he said. “If you take away two or three big plays from last week, it might have been a different game.”

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