IMG Academy football used the notion of 'blueprint' as extra motivation in romp of Cocoa

Ascenders head coach Billy Miller said the team loved the bulletin board material provided during the week leading into the matchup between nationally ranked programs

IMG Academy at Ben Davis Indiana football 9-8-23 / Tyler Hart

BRADENTON, FLORIDA- After the post-game handshakes and team gathering, SBLive/High School On SI Florida's No. 1 ranked IMG Academy was feeling pretty good about soundly defeating No. 2-ranked Cocoa 34-13.

What seemed to be a driving factor heading into the game, however, wasn't just the fact they were playing Cocoa, winners of the last two Class 2S state championships, but the doubt surrounding IMG Academy.

5 takeaways from IMG Academy’s dominant win over Cocoa

Motivation set in when hearing about a blueprint was out there on how exactly to beat the Ascenders was now on the table. To IMG Academy head football coach Billy Miller, if not for a 2-point conversion call against Corner Canyon (Utah) in Week 1, there wouldn't be any talk of any such full proof plan on how his team could be beaten.

"Yeah it was great. (Media) gave us a lot of articles saying the blueprint is out there to beat us," Miller said after the game. "Obviously you guys were wrong about that. Our defense stepped up. We had a ton of takeaways on defense. The points we gave (Cocoa) was off penalties and one big play. We clean that up and were out of here 42-0 a long time ago. Thank you guys for giving us that bulletin board material and if you guys could do it for the rest of the season, we'd really appreciate it."

When the buzzer sounded and the clock hit all zeros in Draper, Utah a couple weeks, high school teams dotted along IMG Academy's scheduled peeped at the tape to see what worked for the Chargers and what didn't.

Looking at the makeup of Corner Canyon and Cocoa, it looked like some similarities were there on paper, including on offense. The Chargers featured an elite quarterback/wide receiver combo in 4-star 2026 passer Helaman Casuga and 5-star 2025 widoeut Jerome Myles.

Comparing Casuga/Myles to Cocoa's duo of Brady Hart (Michigan commitment) and Jayvan Boggs (UCF commitment) made it seem there would be reason to believe the Tigers might be able to follow a similar gameplan. For one half, Cocoa looked like they could hang with IMG Academy.

Miller wanted to test the Tigers for 48 minutes, however, and that he did with a run-heavy attack behind his mammoth offensive line. It was at the line of scrimmage where the Ascenders wore down the noticeably smaller Tigers' front and Michigan commit Donovan Johnson began to make a difference.

"We wanted to come out here (Friday night) and dominate in the run game," Miller added. "We knew we could do that with our offensive line. We wanted to control time of possession. We wanted to see if (Cocoa) could fight for 48 minutes."

The Ascenders (2-1) still have some challenges ahead, with teams like Mandarin, Phenix City Central (Alabama), St. Frances Academy (Maryland) and Venice left on the slate. What IMG Academy can feel good about moving forward is that the blueprint to beat them was left 2,390 miles away in Draper.

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-- Andy Villamarzo | villamarzo@scorebooklive.com | @sblivefl