NEW WASHINGTON (Crawford County Now) — Big plays were the theme for Bucyrus in its victory over Buckeye Central.

The Redmen had six scoring plays of between 29 to 63 yards as they swarmed the young Bucks, 41-14, in a Northern 10 Athletic Conference game.

Bucyrus coach Jon Butchko, who has taken some lumps over his first three seasons, is finally seeing some fruits for his labor, and he couldn’t be happier.

“We’ve been as adaptable and dynamic as you can be and as fast as we’ve been in a long time,” Butchko said. “I think you saw some of that tonight. Da’Shawn (Cosey) is as fast as anybody. Isaac and Wyatt (Makeever) are big play machines. And we’ve got some other guys filling in some pieces and parts around them.”

As proof positive of the coach’s assessment, Cosey had three pass receptions for 107 yards, including touchdowns of 58 and 29 yards. Isaac Makeever had a 46-yard run for a score and in addition to his strikes to Cosey, hit Paten Deskins for 40 yards and Brody Corfman for 29. Wyatt Makeever added a 63-yard TD run.

Buckeye Central (1-4, 0-3) had a respectable 251 yards of offense but had trouble getting it into the end zone.

“I thought there was a lot that was good today. We moved the ball better than we have the last few weeks,” Bucks coach Jordan Phillips said. “Defensively, too many big plays and some of that needs to get cleaned up. Definitely some steps in the right direction. It’s just got to come faster.”

Phillips said the pace of the Redmen offense was a factor.

“They went up tempo early in the game,” Phillips said. “I think it caught our guys by surprise a little bit.”

“We thought if we could get them running around pre-snap, if we could show some of our speed and show some good pace, we were going to make things really, really tough for them,” Butchko said.

Bucyrus (3-2, 2-1) took the opening possession 72 yards on 11 plays capped by Isaac Makeever’s 29-yard strike to Cosey.

After the Bucks turned the ball over on downs at their own 40, Makeever hit Deskins on a seam route for 40 yards and it was 13-0, Redmen, setting the tone for the night.

The Redmen made it 19-0 on Isaac Makeever’s 46-yard run in the second quarter. Ironically, that set the stage for one of the highlights for Buckeye Central.

Madden Alt returned the ensuing kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown to cut the deficit to 19-7.

“He made a great play,” Butchko said of Alt. “Their kids play hard. They have a ton of adversity going on and certainly, we didn’t want to rub anybody’s nose in it.”

The visitors tacked on two more scores before halftime on Wyatt Makeever’s 63-yard run and Cosey’s 58-yard catch to make it 34-7 at intermission.

Phillips noted that the Bucks must control the tempo of games to stay in them.

“It’s so big for us on offense,” Phillips said. “You’ve got to get first downs. You’ve got to sit on the ball a little bit. You’re playing half-court offense. We’ve got to do a better job of executing our offense to make sure we’re winning time of possession.”

Chance Hawley led the Bucks with 70 yards rushing on 14 carries. Jackson Earnest completed five of nine passes for 70 yards, including a 10-yard scoring toss to Lane Caudill, who caught two balls for 40 yards.

Isaac Makeever was eight of 12 for 197 yards and four touchdowns. He added six rushes for 54 yards and a score. Wyatt Makeever ran for 104 yards and a score.

Butchko credits the overall team attitude as a contributing factor to his team’s 3-2 start, the best since 2014.

“This is a good group of people, first of all,” Butchko said. “They’re having a great time playing football. There’s not a whole lot of selfish going on. They all embrace their roles, and they worry about what’s for the good of the team. That makes life really, really easy.”

“We’re playing a lot of young guys,” Phillips said. “That’s the thing about playing young guys — you grow faster because you’re figuring everything out for the first time.”

“They’re a local rival,” Butchko said of the win over the Bucks. “They’re somebody we hadn’t been very successful against.

The last time we came over here, they had 22 up before, I think, the bus even got parked. It was good to go out and exorcise another demon and just go 1-0 this week.”

Box score

Score by quarters

Bucyrus                    13         21          7         0 — 41

Buckeye Central       0           7         0         7 — 14

Scoring summary

First quarter

B — Da’Shawn Cosey 29 pass from Isaac Makeever (Cooper Kalb kick), 7:55.

B — Paten Deskins 40 pass from Isaac Makeever (run failed), 3:05.

Second quarter

B — Isaac Makeever 46 run (pass failed), 11:16.

BC — Madden Alt 85 kickoff return (Nash Rose kick), 11:01.

B — Wyatt Makeever 63 run (Kalb kick), 10:20.

M — Cosey 58 pass from Isaac Makeever (Isaac Makeever run), 2:36.

Third quarter

B — Brody Corfman 29 pass from Isaac Makeever (Kalb kick), 7:59.

Fourth quarter

BC —Lane Caudill 10 pass from Jackson Earnest (Rose kick), :17.

Individual statistics

Passing

Bucyrus: Isaac Makeever 8-12-0 197; Buckeye Central: Jackson Earnest 5-9-0 70.

Rushing

Bucyrus: Wyatt Makeever 4-104, Isaac Makeever 6-54, Ben Atwood 6-18, Tyson Beck 3-3, Brody Corfman 1-0, Hayden Butcher 1-0; Buckeye Central: Chance Hawley 14-70, Madden Alt 6-46, Austin Bogner 6-23, Jackson Earnest 4-23, Kayne Wagner 2-9, Nash Rose 1-5.

Receiving

Bucyrus: Da’Shawn Cosey 3-107, Paten Deskins 1-40, Brody Corfman 1-29, Hayden Butcher 1-10, Cooper Kalb 1-8, Charlie Randall 1-3. Buckeye Central: Lane Caudill 2-40, Madden Alt 2-28, Conner Pressler 1-9, Louie Rietschlin 1—3,

Team statistics

B              BC

First downs                        7               11

Rushing                         21-179        33-171

Passes                             8-12-0        6-10-0

Yards passing                 197               80

Total yards                      376             251

Fumbles-lost                   1-0             1-0

Punts-Avg                     1-34.0        1-42.0

Penalties                         7-70           13-97