HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL ROUNDUP : Half Good Is More Than Enough for Morse

Football practice ought to be a blast for Morse High this week.

Despite the Tigers’ 30-18 victory Friday night over Carson at Mesa College, senior running back Gary Taylor, who rushed for two touchdowns and returned a punt for another against the Colts, said the San Diego Section’s defending 3-A champions were “slack, overconfident and collapsed,” against the City 4-A Division defending champion.

At least in the second half.

Morse jumped to a 22-12 lead after the first quarter, extended it to 30-12 by the half, but the Colts shut down Morse’s offense in the second half, where the Tigers were held to just 8 yards.

“I’m disappointed,” said Taylor, who rushed 14 times for 147 yards. “We just collapsed in the second half. We should have done better. We just got satisfied, we got overconfident. Practice is definitely going to be rough next week.”

Morse Coach John Shacklett wasn’t so quick to condemn his troops.

“This is a great, great win for us, but you have to give them credit,” he said. “They’re a very physical team and they have a great tradition. They just got physical on us (in the second half).”

And both got clumsy on each other. Special teams didn’t exactly have a banner night, with punt returns and kickoff returns included in the scoring summary.

“Special teams were a big difference,” Shacklett said.

After Morse (3-0) opened scoring on Conan Smith’s 4-yard run and went ahead 8-0 on the conversion run, Carson pulled to 8-6 on Theron Hill’s kickoff return of 90 yards. The extra kick failed.

That’s when the Colts, the top-ranked team in The Times’ L.A. City poll, stepped up their effort to take their only lead of the night. Defensive back Dion Brumfield intercepted a pass by Morse quarterback Cary Taylor and returned it 12 yards for the touchdown. The pass conversion was no good.

Morse recouped quickly and went up 22-8 on back-to-back touchdown runs by Gary Taylor. The first was a 69-yard sprint 56 seconds after Carson scored, the second was an 11-yard romp on a pitch from his brother.

Barely missing a beat on his tear, Gary Taylor opened the second quarter with a 67-yard punt return, Smith ran in on the conversion attempt and the Tigers’ went up 30-12.

Said Gary Taylor: “There was definitely some hype about this game all day. Every time a San Diego team plays an L.A. team, we’re trying to prove we can play with the big boys.”

The big boys drew to 30-18 with 6:42 left in the third when Carson quarterback Jamie Sander found Tony Knox on a 39-yard pass play.

Carson came to within a couple of dropped passes of closing to within a touchdown in the second half, but Morse eventually closed the passing lanes and the Colts (1-1) ran out of time.

Sander was 16 of 29 for 181 yards and threw three interceptions. Carson had 77 total rushing yards to Morses’ 103. In total offense, Morse had 137 yards in the first half, 8 in the second.