Announcement
Black River down top two players,
Buckeye rolls arch-rival
10/6/2018 - By ALBERT GRINDLE The Gazette
YORK TWP. — Outside linebacker Spencer Constable was in street clothes and lineman Mitchell Young exited with a leg injury. Without two of its top three players, the Black River football team still put up a heckuva fight defensively against archrival Buckeye in Patriot Athletic Conference Stars Division action.
The Bucks had pocket aces in the hole, however, with their defense and special teams.
The advantages couldn’t have been more decisive.
Returning a punt for a touchdown, setting up the offense for short-field touchdowns twice on other punt attempts and getting two defensive scores Friday, Buckeye turned a one-point halftime lead into a 38-6 obliteration after the Pirates imploded following Young’s injury with 3:36 left in the first half.
Coach Greg Dennison’s Bucks (6-1, 2-0) have won five straight against Black River (3-4, 0-2), by an average of 25.6 points.
“After Coach got on us (during a timeout late in the first half) we decided, ‘You know what? We can just punch these guys right in the mouth and get the ball rolling,”’ tight end/defensive end Logan Schulz said.
Black River (3-4, 0-2) got the score to 7-6 when Riley Bartolic nailed Ryan Shultz for 15 yards on fourth-and-9 in the final minute of the first quarter.
The Pirates defense then went to work, limiting Buckeye to 60 yards on 23 first-half plays.
Even with a 65-yard drive that ended in a Clay Gunkelman 21-yard field goal to open the third quarter, the Bucks struggled to contain Pirates linebackers Alex Vormelker and Bartolic and safety J.T. Armstrong.
Buckeye finished with 198 yards, as quarterback Jacob Doerge had 12 carries for 17 yards but had help from tailback Dom Monaco (20 carries, 89 yards) and fullback Armando Nigh (11, 70).
“(Young) coming out, losing him was big, and also having (Constable) out this week, that’s also big. That’s two studs right there that we’re missing,” Vormelker said. “All we could have done was play hard.
“I’m proud of (the defense). We studied hard all week and studied our checks so we knew what they were doing first string through third string. I’m glad we held them to what we held them to, and we’ll get back at it next week.”
The Black River punt team had nothing to be proud of.
Two minutes in, Buckeye’s Brock Brumfield fielded a punt, kept his balance after slipping on the wet field and rumbled 64 yards down the home sideline. Buckeye went up 10-6 on Gunkelman’s field goal with 8:22 left in the third quarter and 17-6 only 14 seconds later when Schulz returned a bad pistol formation snap 21 yards.
The dagger came when the Pirates’ Conner Burke tried to punt from his own 28 but was forced to run due to pressure from A.J. Kirlough. Buckeye’s Zack Weber made the tackle shy of the marker at the 32, and the Bucks forged a 24-6 advantage when Doerge broke three tackles from 4 yards.
Adding to the game-changing theme, Monaco partially blocked a Burke punt that rolled dead at the Black River 17 early in the fourth.
Monaco scored from 5 yards shortly thereafter, and he initiated a running clock with 1:38 to play on a 15-yard fumble return.
“They really are crucial moments that people don’t really look at in the scores because they look at stats,” Brumfield said.
With the way Buckeye’s defense was playing, that was more than enough support.
Black River finished with 49 plays for 94 yards.
The Pirates lost 49 on five fumbles — two on errant snaps after center Young exited — and faced poor field position as Buckeye’s Nigh pinned punts at the 14 and 5. The Buckeye kick coverage unit allowed Black River to surpass the 35 only once.
Schulz had another fumble recovery in the third quarter. Jacob Stahl was a force at outside linebacker, end Austin DiBiasio added a sack, All-Gazette lineman Ryan Smith contributed a tackle for loss and Michael Knoll broke up a pass.
Considering the Pirates were averaging 36.2 points on 373.5 yards, the overall performance was the Bucks’ best of the season.
“We know they hit hard and come off the ball,” Schulz said. “We figured we’d hit them right back in the mouth because that’s our philosophy. It’s what we do. We wanted to get back there and disrupt everything with that wing-T.”
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