Indians blast past Tornadoes
SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — The question coming into Thursday night’s Pacific League opener between the Hoover High and Burroughs football teams didn’t take long to be answered.
Could Hoover’s defense match up with Burroughs’ potent offensive attack? It turned out to be no contest.
Junior running back Zander Anding rushed for 173 yards and three touchdowns to power Burroughs to a convincing 57-13 road victory against Hoover at Glendale High’s Moyse Field.
Burroughs (1-3) scored the game’s final 43 points to send Hoover to 1-3.
“There were some good parts of the game to watch,” said Burroughs Coach Keith Knoop, whose team shared the league championship last season with Burbank and opened the season with nonleague losses against former Foothill League foes Saugus, Canyon and Hart. “Hoover was a little poor on defense, but they are much improved on offense.
“With Anding, he’s a diamond in the rough. He was on the JV team last year and he’s a phenomenal athlete.”
Anding could have called it a night after he rushed for 130 yards in his first two carries. The bonus for the Indians was that he scored on both rushes, including a 50-yard dash that gave the Indians a 7-0 lead 72 seconds into the contest.
After the Tornadoes tied the game at 7 on a three-yard run by quarterback AJ Pule with 4:25 remaining in the first quarter, Anding broke loose on the next possession with an 80-yard run to give the Indians a 14-7 lead with 1:19 left.
Hoover third-year Coach Chris Long said he figured the Tornadoes would having difficulty stopping Burroughs’ prolific offense, which included three rushing touchdowns from senior quarterback Lucas Yanez.
“We knew that we could move the ball and score,” said Long, who saw Pule complete 18 of 34 passes for 244 yards and three interceptions. “We were praying that we could get a couple of stops or turnovers on defense to keep us in the game.
“Anytime you shoot yourself in the foot with [five] turnovers, you are going to have some trouble. We have got to play perfect football. We need to wake up and do a better job of protecting the ball.”
Hoover cut the lead to 14-13 on a 67-yard scamper by running back Luke Taboyoyong on the first play of the second quarter.
Then the fun ended for the Tornadoes, who saw Yanez zig-zag 41 yards for a touchdown on the ensuing possession to make it 21-13. Anding scored on a two-yard run to make it 28-13 and Yanez extended the lead to 35-13 on a seven-yard run with 3:28 left in the first half.
The Indians, who will next face Pasadena in a league game Oct. 8, scored six touchdowns on their first 19 plays from scrimmage.
Yanez (eight rushes for 104 yards) capped a three-play drive with a nine-yard run to make it 42-13 less than a minute into the third quarter. Burroughs running back Tadeo Zuniga scored a pair of rushing touchdowns in a inside a four-minute span in the fourth quarter. Zuniga, who scored his first touchdown from a yard out, completed the scoring with a 10-yard run with 7:08 remaining.
“We knew we would have trouble on defense, but not that bad,” said Long, who got eight catches for 137 yards from receiver Devaughn Williams.
The Tornadoes, who got 68 yards rushing in 18 carries from Pule, will next face rival Crescenta Valley on Oct. 8 at Moyse.
