After losing first game of season, 10th-ranked Eldon to take on California

Dawson Brandt of the Eldon Mustangs prepares to hand off the ball during their Sept. 8, 2017 game against the Blair Oaks Falcons in Wardsville.
Dawson Brandt of the Eldon Mustangs prepares to hand off the ball during their Sept. 8, 2017 game against the Blair Oaks Falcons in Wardsville.

ELDON, Mo. - The Eldon Mustangs were riding high this fall until the Blair Oaks Falcons came in and flew even higher last week.

Now, the Mustangs' mission is to regroup for tonight's race against the California Pintos. Eldon will host California in Tri-County Conference play tonight (7 p.m. kickoff).

The Mustangs, ranked No. 10 in this week's Missouri Media Rankings Class 3 state poll, comes in 3-1 overall and 1-1 in the conference. California is 1-3 and 1-1 after dropping a 13-6 defensive struggle to Versailles last week.

Last season an injury-riddled Eldon clipped California 15-8.

In a battle of state-ranked Tri-County teams, Eldon was beaten by No. 2-ranked Blair Oaks 32-12 a week ago.

The Falcons were without injured standout quarterback Nolan Hair but still had a big game on both sides of the ball, which didn't surprise Eldon head coach Shannon Jolley, who had warned his team all week how good Blair Oaks was.

Eldon, averaging more than 400 yards of total offense and 43 points per game coming in, was limited to 150 rushing yards by Blair Oaks. And 60 percent of the Mustangs' offensive yards came on their two scoring drives. Hair's replacement, freshman Cade Stockman, fired three TD passes in his first start.

"We thought their defense played extremely well," Jolley said of Blair Oaks. "They did an outstanding job of putting a game plan together without Hair. And we made way too many errors. We were disappointed with our performance across the board.

"This week in practice we made sure to re-visit all the fundamental stuff to see if last week were issues or occurrences."

A young California squad defeated Warsaw two weeks ago, but last week continued to struggle to produce points against Versailles.

After four weeks the Pintos' defense has been stout, allowing just 17.0 points per game. However, California is scoring at just a 9.5 clip.

Against Versailles the lone Pinto score came on a 36-yard breakaway TD run by senior running back Cory Friedmeyer in the first quarter, which came after California intercepted a pass.

Versailles scored twice in the second quarter on short TD runs and led 13-6 at halftime.

In the third period California seemingly scored the game-tying, or possibly game-winning, TD when Friedmeyer caught a pass on a quarterback scramble and and ran in for the touchdown.

However, that play was wiped out with it was deemed to be an illegal forward pass.

Jolley said the Pintos have shown grit and expects to see that tonight.

"I've been coaching around here about 20 years and I've never seen a California team that doesn't play hard," Jolley said. "They like to hang their hat on the option game and keep working on doing some things well on offense. Defensively they've got some linebackers and defensive backs who will fly up and hit you."

California will attempt to do some of the same things Blair Oaks did the previous week in slowing down the Mustangs' wing-T formation, which is averaging 35.8 points per game.

Eldon senior halfback Isaiah Merida has rushed for 650 yards on 84 carries (7.7 yards-per-carry) and 10 touchdowns.

Junior fullback Isaiah Parsons has 369 yards on 92 carries and eight TDs while junior wingback Trenton Dillon has 199 yards on 18 carries and junior quarterback Dawson Brandt has 108 yards on 26 carries.

Brandt has completed 5-of-19 passes for 158 yards, two interceptions and two touchdowns.

Dillon has two catches for 95 yards and both TDs.