by Phil Lozen for AnnArbor.com

Play opened at Milan High School with a new head football coach for the first time in 25 years as Jesse Hoskins strapped on the headset and led the Big Reds onto the field for a season-opening tilt against Ypsilanti.

But the Phoenix proved rude party guests as they went on to win 22-0.

More coverage: Boxscore at MLive.com

Both teams failed to generate offense on their first two possessions, with Milan forced into a pair of three-and-outs and Ypsilanti into a punt and an interception.

Ypsilanti (1-0) finally broke through when quarterback Kevin Clark hit Brent King in the left flat for a 44-yard scoring strike. Milan looked to have the bruising Phoenix receiver bottled up on the left sideline, but King managed to wiggle his way through a group of defenders and race to the end zone for the game’s opening score and a 6-0 Ypsilanti lead.

“I’m not sure what really happened there, I just took a couple hits and got low and kept going. It felt great,” said King.

King put the Phoenix up later in the quarter on a 9-yard pass from Clark. He finished with three catches for 57 yards.

Milan’s young offense stayed in neutral much of the game. The Big Reds -- who lost three running backs to graduation and were starting a new quarterback -- were plagued by negative yardage plays, 10 in total for 57 yards lost. Milan totaled only 94 yards of offense on the night.

A crucial series in the game happened in the final minute of the first half. With 51 seconds left and Milan lining up to punt from its own 19, the Big Reds had trouble with the snap and Ypsilanti took over with 37 seconds left on the Milan 18-yard line.

Clark scored on a QB sneak from 2 yards out with just 2 seconds left to put Ypsilanti up 22-0.

“I thought our defense played well all night,” Hoskins said. “We put them in bad positions in the first half. We couldn’t get a drive to help the defense. We just need to execute better on offense. When we did things right on offense, we had good results. But we’d have two good plays and one negative, and you can’t win that way."

Hoskins was encouraged by the play of the Milan (0-1) defense which forced four turnovers and held Ypsilanti scoreless and to just four first downs on 75 yards in the second half.

But while that was happening, the Milan offense only picked up 40 yards and three first downs.

“Our kids played tough tonight,” Ypsilanti coach Jason Malloy said. “We don’t have a lot of guys this year, so we’re going to work hard and play both ways all season. Our core group of seniors will be important for us.

“We’ve got a long way to go, this is only one game.” Malloy continued. “We need to see a lot of improvement from game one to game two. We’ve got a tough four games to start the season, so we’ll really know a lot about this team after game four.”

Ypsilanti senior running back Austin Sanders led all rushers with 128 yards on 20 attempts.