Sports

Football: Bayport turns up the heat on Porters

Greenport/Southold/Mattituck quarterback Matt Drinkwater looking for an open receiver. (Credit: Garret Meade)
Greenport/Southold/Mattituck quarterback Matt Drinkwater looking for an open receiver. (Credit: Garret Meade)

PHANTOMS 32, PORTERS 0

The sun beat down on the Greenport/Southold/Mattituck Porters on Saturday afternoon. The Bayport-Blue Point Phantoms didn’t do a bad job of that, either.

Using a mix of physicality and a flowing passing game, fourth-seeded Bayport bulldozed the Porters, 32-0, in a rare afternoon game at Greenport High School’s Dorrie Jackson Memorial Field. Both the warm weather and Bayport’s balanced offense took its toll on the Porters, who saw quarterback Brendan Bateman throw for three first-half touchdowns and run for another.

In a statistical oddity, the eighth-seeded Porters (1-2 in Suffolk County Division IV) curiously had only one yard less than Bayport (2-1) at halftime, yet trailed by 26-0.

Bateman, a senior in his third year as a starter, was a big reason why. Before Rob Johnson replaced him in the fourth quarter, Bateman went 7 of 12 passing for 143 yards.

Bayport, which amassed 333 yards in offense to Greenport’s 125, showed its ability to move the ball on the game’s first offensive series. The Phantoms’ six-play scoring drive started with a pass completion and ended with another, a 23-yarder to Vincent Lombardi, who broke a tackle and dashed to the end zone.

On its next series, Bayport needed only four plays for another touchdown. Bateman, pressured, scrambled a bit before finding Chris Gallo wide open on the right side for a 50-yard scoring connection.

What would have been a 53-yard touchdown pass to Martin Naro was nullified by a chop block penalty, but the Phantoms got their third touchdown a little bit later, with Edgar Somerville spinning away from the defense for a 13-yard score.

With the ball on their own 27-yard line, the Porters opted to try for a first down on fourth-and-two late in the second quarter, but an incompletion gave Bayport the ball with excellent field position. Three plays later, Bateman extended the score to 26-0 with 34.6 seconds left in the second quarter. After taking the snap in the shotgun position, he darted forward up the middle 22 yards for a touchdown.

Greenport’s Timmy Stevens took a helmet to his right shin on the play and had to be helped off the field while putting no pressure on the leg. After the game, Porters coach Jack Martilotta said he thinks Stevens will be able to play in the team’s next game Wednesday evening against Southampton/Ross.

A 1-yard touchdown run by Robert Romano with 8:25 left in the fourth quarter accounted for the game’s final points.

Martilotta said the heat took a toll on his players, several of whom had to leave the game with muscle cramps, including Chris Dwyer, who made a career-high four catches for 54 yards in the first half.

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