HUNTINGTON – The ray of hope glimmered for 15 plays and a shade fewer than 5 1/2 minutes, as Austin Shoemaker ran and Kevin Fisher threw and the Huntington North Vikings, uncowed, went right at the state’s second-ranked 5A team.

And then Andrew Coe came on to kick the field goal and came on again to kick it back to the Carmel Greyhounds, and it was lights out.

Eleven soul-crushing running plays and 62 hard yards later, the Greyhounds answered the Vikings’ three points with seven of their own. And it was 21-3, Carmel, on the way to an eventual 41-3 stroll that was short on flash and long on dash.

After the Vikings’ stirred from a mostly silent first quarter – they finished it down 7-0, with no first downs and minus 6 total yards – to ding the scoreboard, Carmel decided it was time to cut the fancy stuff. Across the last 2 1/2 quarters, the Greyhounds threw just two passes, both completions, and grounded out scoring drives of 11, five, nine and 11 plays.

“They’re a great football team, and against a great football team you can’t make any mistakes, and we made too many tonight,” said Huntington North coach Rief Gilg, who got 61 yards on 21 hard carries from Shoemaker and 114 yards on 13-of-22 passing from Fisher, but saw his team undone by a couple of pass interceptions, one of which was returned 20 yards for a touchdown by Carmel defensive lineman Shawn Heffern.

“Look, the kid made a great play,” Gilg added. “It was scouted well. This is a well-coached bunch. It’s no fluke that they are where they’re at every year.”

Carmel lost the ball on a fumble on its second play from scrimmage, ran out of downs on its second possession, and then found its mojo.

Quarterback Scott Stilson hit tight end Billy Davis down the middle of the field for 42 yards to begin the Greyhounds’ third possession; five plays later Jesse Hollander plowed across from the 3-yard line, and the Greyhounds were on their way.

Hollander ran for two more scores on short runs and backup quarterback Brandon Denning ran for 86 yards and two scores in little more than a quarter to finish the evening’s work for Carmel.

“I guess there’s always that big theory that everyone says they’re huge and big, and they are a great team, and they do have some big guys,” Shoemaker said of the Vikings’ sluggish start. “I think a lot of us were getting psyched out.

“But in the second quarter our offense started to get things together and we just kept playing hard.”

Which was what Gilg liked most about what he saw Friday night.

“I liked how hard we played,” he said. “I thought our kids played very, very hard tonight for 48 minutes, which is something we talked about all week.

“You also take the fact that you went toe-to-toe with one of the premier programs in the state, and you played really very well.”

bensmith@jg.net