BELLEVILLE -- After a somewhat lackluster first half Saturday, the Belleville East Lancers finally began showing why they are one of the area's best football teams.
Sounding the alarm was senior running back ReShawn Bean, who piled up 187 yards and three touchdowns in a 27-0 Southwestern Conference victory over city rival Belleville West.
"I was a little bit afraid we'd come out flat," said Belleville East coach Tim Funk, who spent the whole week trying to get his players to move past an emotional win in Week 4 over East St. Louis. "Even though it's the West game, it's not my decision but I just don't like the Saturday afternoon game in September.
"We came out a little bit flat and that's my fault. We addressed it all week and in my opinion, we weren't ready to play."
The Lancers improved to 4-1 this season and 3-0 in the Southwestern Conference. It was the third straight loss for Belleville West, which dipped to 1-4 overall and 0-3 in league play.
East quarterback David Carter completed 11-of-17 passes for 169 yards. His favorite target was Christian Herring, who had seven catches for 115 yards.
Bean did all his work in three quarters after sitting out the first quarter because of disciplinary reasons.
He scored on a 2-yard run with 1:08 left in the first half, then broke through the middle of the line and outran everyone to the end zone on a 46-yard TD play early in the third quarter.
Bean also had a 4-yard TD run with 6:40 remaining.
"I felt like once ReShawn got going and we started getting yards like we can, then I felt like the second half we played better," said East running back and linebacker Chase Allen. "Still, that first half was big and we have to play harder.
"I don't know if there was a hangover from (last week), but I don't think we came out like we did against East Side. Against East Side we were ready every play, we were coming hard. This game we weren't like that."
They got there eventually, but things unraveled quickly for West.
The Maroons had decent success running the ball much of the day with Jeremy Hill (64 yards) and Jvonta Williams (60 yards).
However, East's Corey Anderson picked up a fumble by West quarterback Kyle Leadlove caused on a hit by Allen just 2 minutes, 18 seconds into the game and rambled 46 yards for a touchdown.
That put the Maroons in a hole from which they never did escape. West coach Cameron Pettus, whose team has lost three straight, admitted that wasn't exactly the way he wanted the game to begin.
"Yes sir, absolutely," Pettus said. "Down against a very good football team ... that's never a good thing. I was very proud of our effort today, I thought the kids played hard and they executed what we wanted them to do.
"We've got to have somebody step up and make a play."
The Maroons lost two fumbles in the first 2 1/2 minutes and Leadlove was intercepted twice Saturday.
East led 13-0 at halftime and Funk felt like there should have been more fire and emotion in the annual city rivalry game.
"I asked the guys at halftime, what do I say? I don't know what to do," he said. "I try to stay quiet and calm and let the game take its course. Then I just see us out there walking around, so I get excited and start yelling because we're flat.
"It's like we're glazed over and not ready to play --and that's my responsibility. I don't have the answer for it."
Bean's 46-yard TD run got the second half off to a better start for the Lancers. He added a 4-yard TD run midway through the fourth quarter to close out the scoring.
"It took us a little bit of time to get going, but we've got to be better than we were today," Funk said. "I'm not taking anything away from Belleville West, they played hard. But we've got to get better."
Pettus sees signs of positive growth, but would rather see victories and rapid improvement.
"We're in the process of doing that," he said. "We're changing the culture and that's what we're working on. We're going to do things the right way and we're going to be able to compete. That's the plan."
