No. 10 Marshall 35, Mount Vernon 14
By Jimmy Thomas
DigitalSports.com
Marshall
came into Friday night’s Northern Region Division 5 quarterfinal not
having reached the playoffs since 1993. The Statesmen were also without
the services of senior standout running back and outside linebacker Chris Hurlburt, who dislocated his shoulder and put an early end to his season.
Mount Vernon, conversely, entered the game having won five of its last six.
None of this mattered.
The
Statesman (8-3) jumped to an early lead and rolled to a 35-14 victory
over the visiting Majors (6-5), earning a date in the semifinal round
next week at top-seeded Stone Bridge (10-1), which defeated Lee, 42-13
in its quarterfinal pairing.
“It’s great,” Marshall Coach J.T. Biddison said. “All the credit goes to the kids and the assistant coaches … I’m just along for the ride.”
With Marshall already leading 7-0, junior quarterback Harold Sweet went deep and found senior Joshua Earl on a beautiful fade route that was perfectly-placed over the receivers’ left shoulder for a score and a two-touchdown lead.
Mount Vernon answered when senior Carlos Wilholt
fielded a punt and went across the grain and up the far sideline on a
long return that have the Majors possession on the Marshall 26-yard
line. Six plays later Mount Vernon junior quarterback Brian Green dove in from the 1-yard line to close the gap to 14-7 and get the Majors back in the game.
Or, so they thought.
Marshall senior Doug Howell took the ensuing kickoff 85 yards to the end zone, to give the Statesmen the momentum, and a 21-7 lead, at half time.
It
seemed for a moment that the 15-minute break put new life into the
Majors. After recovering a muffed punt, Green hit Wilholt from 28-yards
out for the touchdown to again narrow the gap to seven.
Then, in
a play that was set up throughout the first half, Mount Vernon’s
kickoff team made things even more interesting. The Majors, on each
previous kickoff, had gathered in a huddle before each kick, but then
after sprinting to the line of scrimmage screaming, they pulled up and
started over. Maybe it was an act of intimidation or maybe trickery,
but on the kickoff following Wilholt’s score it was different.
This time there was no pulling up, and sophomore kicker Colin Amerau instead dribbled a perfect onside kick as the wedge breakers destroyed Marshall’s front line and recovered the ball.
But
with 5 minutes, 29 seconds remaining in the third quarter — and the
Statesmens’ defense having been on the field the entire quarter — they
made a big stand. Marshall forced Mount Vernon to turn the ball over on
downs, stuffing the Majors’ running game on 4th-and-1 at Marshall’s
31-yard line.
That’s when a semi-well-rested Marshall offense
(many of the Statesmen play on both sides of the ball) took the field.
But senior Craig Murphy, a key two-way player along with Howell and Sweet, caught two fourth quarter touchdowns to put the game out of reach.
Sweet
finished 7-of-8 passing for 86 yards with three touchdowns, and Howell
added 121 yards rushing on 27 carries with one score.
No. 8 West Potomac 13, No. 6 Lake Braddock 9
By Phil Murphy
DigitalSports.com
On Oct. 12, in a battle of 5-1 teams, No.8 West Potomac was shelled by
No.6 Lake Braddock on the Bruins’ Homecoming, 41-0, in a game covered
by every local media outlet imaginable. In Friday’s Northern Region
Division 6 quarterfinal, the Wolverine (8-3) defense, determined to
avenge the embarrassing mid-season defeat to the Bruins (8-3), held Lake
Braddock’s offense – a unit that scored 63 points just a week
ago — scoreless in an upset 13-9 road win.
Braddock struck first as a West Potomac senior punter Matt Husband
(5-10, 170) punt was blocked and recovered by
Wolverine Jeremy Delvalle in the end zone for a safety,
resulting baseball-like 2-0 margin in favor of the purple-and-gold.
After forcing Lake Braddock to punt on its ensuing possession,
West Potomac marched 82 yards on 15 plays, chewing up exactly six
minutes of clock and converting three third downs in the process. The drive had stalled
at Lake Braddock 4-yard line, but was reincarnated when the Bruins lined up in
the neutral zone on Husband’s field goal attempt, moving the ball half
the distance to the goal.
West Potomac Coach Eric Henderson, a
former Lake Braddock offensive line coach, elected to gamble and go for
it on a 4th-and-goal from the 2 yard line, and the decision paid off. Junior quarterback Cole
Walter took the snap on a designed quarterback dive and extended the
ball over the plane of the goal line for 7-2 lead.
The Wolverines scored again on their next drive on a 4-yard pass from
Walter to senior wide receiver Andrew Swinson, making the
margin 13-2 after a blocked extra point. West Potomac seemed to be
in business again after a Lake Braddock fumble gave it back the ball at the Bruins’ 14-yard line with :33 seconds left in the
first half.
However, the momentum quickly swing in Lake
Braddock’s favor on the next play as a Walter’s pass attempt was picked
off by senior defensive back Michael Harrison and taken 90 yards to
the house.
“Nothing was said
[about the interception],” West Potomac two-way senior lineman Jimmy Bennett said. “We all just took it upon ourselves to make
sure Cole was alright and say ‘Hey, they are not going to score on our
defense.’ “
Despite outgaining the Bruins 201 yards to 76 in the first half — 41 of
which for Lake Braddock came on a Halley pass to junior wide receiver
Keon Robinson — the Wolverines only held a 13-9 lead heading to the
locker room.
The second half was surprising uneventful. The Wolverines applied the
“bend but not break” mantra to perfection, allowing the Bruins to reach
the red zone twice before forcing turnovers on downs on both
occasions. Henderson trusted his defense, using inside runs by
junior running back Daniel Baker and short, low-risk passes to his receiving corps to slowly drain time off the clock.
“We decided we have to just push people around and we
really did it today,” Bennett said. “What we could not do at the end of the last game
[against TC Williams], we did at the end of this game. We got our first
downs, we ran out the clock. It was what we needed to do and we did it.”
The strategy, albeit somewhat traumatic to the hearts of West Potomac
fans,
worked immaculately. Baker carried the ball 26 times for 118 yards and
Walter finished 17-of-27 through the air for 182 yards, including going
9-of-12 in
the second half, with his only miscue being the interception to
Harrison.
The defense held firm, limiting Bruins’ senior quarterback Shane Halley — who rushed for 209 yards
on just five carries against Hayfield last week— to 76
yards on 29 carries, an average of 2.6 yards per attempt, including stopping him six inches
short of a first down on a 4th-and-1 attempt with 2:05 left to play.
The turnover on downs was the fourth of the game for Lake Braddock, all
of which occurred inside West Potomac territory.
The Wolverines were able to successfully run out the final seconds and
take a 13-9 road win back to Alexandria, avenging the Week 7 meltdown
and advance to the Northern Region semifinals. But their celebration must
quickly turn to concentration: West Potomac will face No.1 Westfield (11-0) next week in the semifinal round.
“We are going to watch their
film, study their film and figure out the best way to beat them,” Bennett said of the Bulldogs. “We
have to figure out what does work against them and what doesn’t work
against them … That is what our coaching staff does; they are very good
at that. They put us in the best position to win. And we win.”
NOTE: Bennett a Husky
Bennett, a consensus Top 30 offensive
tackle in national recruiting lists, committed last Sunday to play next year for Coach Randy
Edsall and the University of Connecticut.
“I like
the team, I like the coaches and I like the place up there,” Bennett said. “It is a
lot like West Potomac.”
Bennett
said he chose UConn over Boston College, Maryland, Penn State and
several other prominent east coast schools. He also stars on the
Wolverines basketball team, leading the squad in
rebounds last season.
Robinson 17, No. 3 Chantilly 14
By Eric Avissar
Robinson High Senior
Sports Editor of Valor
Dictus
The 2007 football season has been a wild ride for Robinson, filled with many ups and downs.
The highlights have included a shutout Lake Braddock and a crushing win over Stone Bridge. On the other, the Rams fell Concorde District rivals Oakton and Herndon and lost to league favorites Westfield and Chantilly.
Friday night, though, the seventh-seeded Rams played with a fire and a passion that was unmatched in any of those previous games. The result was a 17-14 victory over in the re-match with second-seeded Chantilly (8-3) in the quarterfinal round of the Northern Region Division 6 playoffs to give Ram players, coaches and fans a new favorite memory for the 2007 season.
Robinson (6-5) will travel to face fourth-seeded West Springfield (9-2) next week in the semifinal round.
“We really worked hard in practice,” Rams’ defensive end Ryan Holder said. “We believed that if we just played
together, we could come out on top. Both the offense and defense came
up big when we had to finish.”
Things didn’t always look like they would go Robinson’s way. The Rams, trailing 7-3 with less than 20 seconds remaining in the second quarter, fumbled the ball on what would have been a mundane, 3-yard run to end the half. Instead, Chantilly safety Austin Decker picked up the loose ball and returned it 20 yards to give the Chargers a 14-3 lead at the break.
But Robinson was able to make a crucial first strike in the second half on a nifty, 38-yard touchdown run by running back Wynton Fox. The Rams then took the lead on a scoring drive in which Peter Ferrara played a critical role in setting up a 20-yard touchdown run by Murray (game-high 182 yards), who split Chantilly’s double coverage and raced up the
sideline for a 24-yard score. Robinson, having failed on its previous extra-point attempt, went for the two-point conversion and got it on a bootleg pass to Dennis Bazow.
From there it was up to the Rams’ defense to hold, and it did. Robinson’s defense yielded only run of more than 20 yards to Chantilly standout tailback Torrian Pace, who burned the Rams for several long runs in their regular-season meeting. Rams’ sophomore linebacker Brian Laiti played a major role in stopping the run game, while linebacker Thomas Menard keyed several pass break-ups, including one on 4th-and-9 that halted a potential Charger scoring drive. Menard also came up huge again, tackling Pace for a loss that forced another fourth down midway through the final quarter.
“I just had the mindset I needed to come out and play a great game tonight,” Laiti said. “We all were pumped and had great spirit. We all did a great of tackling, especially when it came to defending those outside tosses.”
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