LAGRANGE-One year ago in week 5, Lakeland traveled to Angola on their homecoming and spoiled it with a 30-28 win on a Carson Mickem field goal. Tonight, while Angola probably has bigger goals in mind, it sure felt like a revenge game in some fashion. Angola controlled almost the entire game from start to finish as Angola crashes Lakeland’s homecoming 40-21. Angola ran for 356 of their 398 total yards to which it changed the entire outcome of this game. 

Angola won the coin toss, but decided to defer to the second half. So Lakeland had the ball first with a chance to get the rowdy Laker fans fired up. For the first 20-30 seconds of this game, it appeared Lakeland was at the cusp of scoring a touchdown when Kham Malaivanh had carries for 20 and 15 yards out. But then at the Angola 28, the Hornets shut the door and forced Lakeland to turn the ball over on downs. At the time, it felt like Angola had dodged a huge bullet at the early stages of this game. This was the closest Lakeland ever got to grabbing a lead. From here on out, Angola controlled pretty much the entire night. 

On their first drive, Angola marched the ball down the field where the Hornets eventually capitalized on a Tyler Call run from 26 yards to the end zone to take a 7-0 lead with 7:24 left in the 1Q. While Kham Malaivanh continued to run the ball consistently well, Lakeland struggled to move the chains where at one point Lakeland had four straight punts. Angola’s next drive resulted in Andre Tagliaferri cutting to the Lakeland sideline for a 38-yard run to extend it to 14-0 with 4:37 to go in the 1Q. 

The second quarter proved to be more of the same as Lakeland was unable to get the passing game going for most of the night, and Angola kept controlling time of possession. The Pistol offense went back to work milking more clock. Tyler Call kept doing doing Tyler Call things with his feet and skills, Lane King made a huge 20-yard catch on a 3rd down, and then they added onto the lead. 

Tyler Call would score his second and final touchdown of the game when he completely fooled a Lakeland defender and made a shimmy move through a huge hole and taking the ball 38 yards to the house. With 5:57 left in the first half, Angola led 20-0 after a missed PAT. Tyler Call finished the game posting 6-10 completion for 42 yards and 18 carries for 167 yards. Angola would score one more time before the half was done, when Andre Tagliaferri, on 4th and Goal, ran on a reverse sweep and found open grass into the end zone. The halftime score was Angola 27 Lakeland 0. 

Lakeland’s pass rush would step up in the second half giving Call far less room to manage, but the Angola defensive unit was not going to allow the Lakers to beat them on downfield throws. Off a fumble that Angola recovered, they used it to score their fifth touchdown on Andre Tagliaferri’s third and final touchdown on 3rd and Goal. While they missed the two-point conversion, Angola led 33-0 with 5:16 left in the 3Q. Tagliaferri finished the game with 15 carries for 99 yards. 

However, a pass interference call on Ethan Miller would set up Lakeland for their first of three second half touchdowns, when Kham Malaivanh scored from 2 yards out to make it 33-7 after three quarters. Angola’s first drive of the fourth quarter would set up Ethan Miller to score Angola’s sixth and final touchdown with 7:29 left to make it 40-7. Lakeland would add two more garbage-time touchdowns to make the score more respectable. First it was Braydon Holbrook finding Blake Alleshouse from 5 yards out at the 5:44 mark, and the other came on a run from Drannon Miller with 2:15 left. 

With Fairfield’s 33-7 loss to West Noble, (3-2) Angola is the only team from the NECC’s Big School Division without a division loss and can clinch at least a share with a homecoming win over (4-1) Fairfield next Friday. Meanwhile, (2-3) Lakeland will travel to Albion to face (2-3) Central Noble where quarterback Brody Morgan broke a 43-year-old program passing record with 296 passing yards against Fremont.