PARIS — You know that old, college homecoming trick, where the powerhouse program schedules Catatonic State or some school with five directional words in its name as a glorified scrimmage?

Well, what unfolded Saturday for Oxford Hills was the reciprocal of that. Portland administered the medicine in the form of a 68-0 rout at Gouin Athletic Complex.

It was the first-ever gridiron meeting between two schools assigned to the rebranded Eastern Class A division, but no, Oxford Hills coach Mark Soehren isn’t a subscriber to any ‘the-south-is-way-better’ hypothesis.

“I get that Cheverus is excellent, and Portland, but it’s not like Lawrence wasn’t last year. It’s not like Brunswick wasn’t last year,” Soehren said. “We’ve just got to prepare better and we’ve got to play better. We still have a playoff run, so we have to learn to compete.”

Portland (4-1) dominated in every facet imaginable, with two blocked punts, an interception and a fumble recovery complementing touchdowns from six different players.

Junior quarterback Jordan Talbot rushed for 110 yards and threw for 74 more, accounting for two scores in each fashion. Justin Zukowski tacked on 95 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

Held to minus-three yards in the first half, Oxford Hills (1-4) finished with only three first downs and was out-gained 482 to 66.

“No game is ever easy and no opponent is ever taken lightly. Coach (Jim Hartman) made us practice hard this week, unlike last week, and we came out clicking I feel like on all cylinders,” said Portland senior Ronald Hargrove, who joined the party with a 56-yard TD run in the second quarter. “The bus ride was a little bit of a long one, although not as long as Bangor, and you could tell there was a sense of urgency right when we got off the bus.”

Talbot capped Portland’s opening drive with a 10-yard scoring strike to Jayvon Pitts-Young.

Another misadventure on a punt — this one a snap over the head of Patrick Macro — gave Portland possession at the 2. Zukowski barreled in from there.

Then it got out-of-control in a hurry, with Portland finding the end zone five times in the second quarter for a 47-0 disparity. In addition to Hargrove’s score, Talbot had bootlegs of 1 and 50 yards.

“They loaded the box with 9 or 10 guys, and Coach tells us on a daily basis that if they take away Zuke, it will open it up for one of us,” Hargrove said.

Domenic Fagone delivered a left-right knockout punch in the final minute of the half. First he grabbed a 10-yard TD from Talbot. Then he picked off Brady LaFrance and ran it back 60 yards.

“That’s a knife in the back,” Hartman said. “We’ve been trying for two years to get these boys to do what we did at Yarmouth (where the coach won 2010 and 2011 Class C championships), and this is as close as we’ve gotten.”

Zukowski and Pitts-Young each scored again in the third quarter.

Oxford Hills’ one stop of the day came early.

A forced fumble by Davis Turner and recovery by Jeff Merrill at the 2-yard line prevented what might have been another Bulldogs touchdown in the first quarter, although Portland soon took it back with one of the two blocked punts.

Malik Geiger rushed 10 times for 69 yards to lead the Vikings, who were playing without the right side of their starting offensive line as well as their middle linebacker and safeties for a variety of reasons.

“Clearly they’re a good team. There’s nothing they did that surprised us,” Soehren said. “We knew what they would be in for defense. We knew what plays they ran. There was a little bit of a snowball effect.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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