With Pleasant Plains on the horizon for No. 9 O.S. Springfield, Phillip Heppe wanted his team to show explosiveness against Griggsville-Perry on Saturday.
The Eagles did, and plenty of it.
Conor McCaffrey threw a career-high five touchdown passes and had only four incompletions in a little more than two quarters of work and the defense earned its first shutout ever in a 52-0 victory over the Tornadoes.
"I thought Conor did a nice job," said Heppe after the Eagles (4-1) matched their largest margin of victory of the season from 66-14 win over North Mac last month. "Obviously a lot of good things happened as we had an opportunity to do things against an undermanned Griggsville-Perry team today.
"They handled themselves like a team that had a vision of what they wanted to accomplish and they went out and they did it," Heppe said.
The Eagles had 573 total yards, with Jace Easley rushing over 100 for the third time this season. Easley had 102 yards on seven carries. O.S. Springfield limited the Tornadoes (1-4) to 228 yards.
McCaffrey completed 16 of 20 for 261 yards before giving way to backup Jace Easley at the 4:11 mark of the third quarter. Easley added a TD pass in the third quarter, a 7-yarder to Noah Rodenburg.
"(Heppe) challenged us to focus on ourselves," said McCaffrey, who did not throw a touchdown pass last week in Our Savior's 35-20 victory over New Berlin. "We wanted to go out there and put up some points and have an attention to details."
After going three-and-out on their first possession, the Eagles drove 80 yards in six plays and 1:58, culminating with McCaffrey's 17-yard scoring pass to Logan Allen. Scoring passes to Paul Hammond (21 yards) and Sasha Vanderkecha (34 yards) made it 21-0 after the first quarter. McCaffrey then hit Hammond (8 yards) and Vanderkecha (25 yards) with scoring passes in the second quarter for a 35-0 halftime lead.