Photo Credit: Beth Fox/PrepsKC 
In a slobber-knocker of a football game, it was Maryville that did the most knocking.
Maryville meted out punishment on both sides of the ball in Saturday’s Missouri Class 3 quarterfinal against Odessa, combining a grind-it-out offense with a hard-hitting defense for a 14-0 victory on the Bulldogs’ home field.
A nail-biter? Well, yes and no. Odessa’s defense played well enough to frequently thwart a Spoofhound offense that averaged 27 points a game. The Bulldogs’ offense, however, never got untracked and never threatened to score.
“I was really proud of the way our defense played today,” Odessa coach Mark Thomas said. “Our kicking game was solid, our defense was solid. We just couldn’t get anything going on offense.”
Maryville (9-4) set the tone on the game’s first possession. With running backs Sadler Viau and Gavin McAtee finding hole up the middle, the Spoofhounds took the opening kickoff and marched 79 yards to the Odessa 1-yard line.
But on fourth and goal, Odessa’s defense stiffened and stuffed McAtee at the goal line.
“It set the tone a couple of different ways,” Thomas said. “I knew it was going to be really difficult with their ability to run the football and our inability to run the football. I knew it was going to be a factor if we couldn’t find some big plays.”
Odessa (7-5) never came close to finding that big play or any kind of traction on offense. The Bulldogs managed only eight first downs for the entire game, never crossed midfield until the fourth quarter and never saw the red zone.
“We just couldn’t get anything going on offense,” Thomas said. “And we’ve had those kinds of issues all year long, and what happened today wasn’t anything we hadn’t experienced before, but most of the time we seemed to fight our way out of it.”
Maryville’s next possession ended when Odessa’s Cole Westerhold intercepted a pass by Maryville quarterback Jackson Dredge just after a scoreless first quarter. But Odessa couldn’t capitalize, and the Spoofhounds responded with a 12-play 73-yard drive capped by Viau’s 1-yard TD run for a 6-0 lead.
Odessa blocked the point after, and the Bulldogs blocked a field goal to end Maryville’s ensuing possession. The Bulldogs even forced a couple of turnovers on downs.
But Odessa’s offense continued to misfire, and Maryville put the game away with a 20-play, 91-yard march over the third and fourth quarters that ended with Viau blasting in from 2 yards out and Luke Allen tacking on the two-point conversion.
“They just wore down,” Thomas said of the Odessa defense. “We couldn’t keep (Maryville) off the field enough and make them play more defense than what they did.”
Maryville, the Class 3 state champions in 2017 and runner-up in 2020, will meet Blair Oaks in the semifinals on Nov. 30.
Odessa the Class 3 champs in 2019 and a quarterfinalist last year, brings to a close what Thomas considered a challenging season for a 33-player squad that was both thin and young.
“This team I felt like definitely over-achieved,” Thomas said. “For what this team, getting to the quarterfinals, if you had told me that at the beginning of the season, I would have said I’ll take that, for sure.”
