St. Paul’s Wolves hosted the St. Augustine Purple Knights Friday at Hunter Stadium in a scrimmage.

Wolves’ head coach Ken Sears said his team went up against a very big, very athletic St. Aug club.

“They are well coached and have good team speed,” Sears said.

St. Paul’s linebacker Dee Koepp and defensive back Kris Brumfield (15) take the high and low approach bringing down a St. Augustine runner in Friday night’s scrimmage at Hunter Stadium. St. Paul’s plays Archbishop Rummel Friday in the Fontainebleau Jamboree. (Photo by Mike McCall)

Sears held out his junior quarterback Alec Duncan, who is recovering from a sprained MCL back in July.

“It wasn’t anything severe. He’s been getting reps in practice, but we red jerseyed him for the last two weeks or so. He’ll be ready to go against Karr (Sept. 4) in the season opener,” Sears added.

Sears said he’s good to go and has his mobility back, but he is undecided yet whether he will play him in the Wolves’ Friday game against Archbishop Rummel, which takes place at 6:30 as part of the Fontainebleau Jamboree.

“Not playing Alec (Duncan) gave us an opportunity to get some of our younger guys some work. Offensively, we had a lot of bright spots. I felt like we ran the ball well, but we were real inconsistent in the passing game. Late in the scrimmage, we started to complete some passes and were able to move the ball,” Sears added.

Sophomore quarterback Patrick Duncan, the younger brother of Alec, sophomore Reed Wilson and freshman Thaddeus Kazunas saw time.

Sears said his team was able to achieve some balance towards the end.

“We had a number of positives in the scrimmage. We know what we need to work on in the next couple of weeks. Overall, I thought we did well. We have a lot of things to work on, but definitely there were more positives than negatives,” Sears said.

The scrimmage featured a series of 12 plays with the No. 1s along with a four-down goal line period along with a series with the No. 2s and a special team’s period. It was followed by another series of plays with the 1s and a series with the 2s back on the field. The No. 3s and 4s also saw action.

The scrimmage concluded with a running time quarter. Sears said his team had two possessions to St. Aug’s one in the quarter.

“We were about to go in for a score at the end, but we fumbled on the 3-yard line.”

Sears said junior running back Mikhail Washington turned in a bunch of nice runs and junior Stephon Smith came up with some nice catches. Joseph Long, the Wolves’ sophomore fullback, did a great job on some isolation blocks and he popped a few nice runs.

“I was real pleased with all three of our backs,” Sears added.

The Wolves tallied five TDs in the scrimmage with backup quarterback Patrick Duncan making the most of his opportunities with his older brother (Alec) sitting out as he connected for three TD passes.

Duncan found Smith on a short scoring pass in the goal line situation. Duncan also hit David Fleming from 20 yards out and linked up with Kris Brumfield on a 25-yard scoring toss. Washington scored on a four-yard run and Wilson reached the end zone on a 50-yard run.

Sears said the offensive line played well as a group.

“We had a few missed assignments, but I thought they played disciplined football. We didn’t have any pre-snap penalties and we didn’t jump off. I thought we did a pretty good job with our run blocking.”

Sears said the defense did a good job with the pass rush led by senior end Houston Bates.

“I also thought our linebacker play was pretty solid along with our secondary, which did a nice job covering St. Aug’s speedy receivers. Overall, we did a good job against the run as well,” Sears said.

“I felt we did well defensively. Basically, our 1s shut out their 1s. We gang tackled and got to the ball. Hopefully, we can keep that up and play that kind of defense week in and week out. If we can do that we’ll be alright.”