DaytonDailyNews.com

GERMANTOWN — Valley View's defense put the clamps on the Monroe offense Friday night, Sept. 5.

The Spartans held the Hornets to 107 yards of total offense in a 28-0 victory at Barker Field.

"I thought our defensive group played rather well. Our defensive line had a pretty good game as far as what we wanted to do up front, and that was an improvement over what we did last week," Valley View coach Jay Niswonger said. "We'll go from there."

In addition to keeping Monroe off the scoreboard, the Spartan defense helped swing the momentum in Valley View's favor in the second half. Trailing 7-0 early in the third quarter, the Hornets had the ball at their own 34 when Valley View senior linebacker Joey Mosley scooped up a fumbled pitch and ran untouched to the end zone to give the Spartans a 14-0 lead with 7:43 remaining in the quarter.

"That was a good spark for us," Niswonger said.

The Spartans were able to seal the game early in the fourth quarter when senior running back Tyler Jones scored on a 9-yard run to extend the lead to 21-0 with 9:43 remaining in the game. Senior running back Johnny Day rounded out the scoring with a 10-yard touchdown scamper with 3:02 left in the fourth quarter. Day completed 12-of-21 passes for 142 yards and a touchdown as the Spartans improved to 3-0 on the year. The loss dropped Monroe to 0-3.

"That's a good ballclub, and we played with them for a half. We've had to battle through some adversity, and our kids battled, and we played as well as we could have played," Monroe coach Ken Meibers said. "We battled right to the end. We had a costly turnover. Obviously that swung momentum because I felt going into the locker room that we had a little momentum going our way. ... It's like a repeating cycle, we can't get it to stop right now."

A big play on special teams led to the only score of the first half. The Spartans were able to pin the Hornets inside their own 1-yard-line after downing a punt just before it rolled into the end zone. After forcing Monroe to go three-and-out, the Spartans took over on the Monroe 43-yard line. It appeared as though Valley View was going to have to settle for a field-goal attempt until it was hit with a failure to wear proper equipment penalty that cost it 5 yards. After the penalty, the Spartans elected to go for the first down, and Day connected with Jones for 8 yards to move the chains. Three plays later, Day connected with senior wide receiver Andy Genslinger on a 27-yard touchdown strike to give the Spartans a 7-0 lead. The Spartans controlled the field position battle throughout the first half, but the Hornets were able to limit them to seven points.

"Our defense stepped up and played a phenomenal game, and offensively we didn't do anything to help them out," Meibers said.

Contact this reporter at dgedney@coxohio.com.