EXPANDED HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL COVERAGE
Come back with four touchdowns after being shut out in first half
North Allegheny’s Ethan Augustin brings down Pine-Richland’s Cole Spencer down just shy of a touchdown in North Allegheny’s 27-7 victory.
With just under seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter, North Allegheny senior running back Ben Maenza found a seam and dashed 69 yards for a touchdown, with defending WPIAL and PIAA champion Pine-Richland’s conference title hopes fading in the background.
Maenza’s score, which marked North Allegheny’s third second-half touchdown, helped the Tigers to a 27-7 comeback win and WPIAL Class 6A Quad County conference championship Friday at Newman Stadium.
North Allegheny scored 20 points in the fourth quarter, including a 2-yard touchdown run by junior quarterback Ben Petschke with 40 seconds to play, which sealed the win and the Tigers undefeated regular season.
“To go through the whole 10-game schedule and get to this point and do it and be perfect, it’s great,” North Allegheny coach Art Walker Jr. said. “A conference championship was something that we were looking and trying to accomplish. It was a goal. Distant goal, because it was one game at a time, and everything like that.”
Pine-Richland and North Allegheny each entered the game already having clinched a first-round bye and home-field advantage in their first playoff game. It’s possible the teams will meet again in the 6A championship.
Maenza led the Tigers with 142 yards on nine carries.
It looked as if North Allegheny would start off with the lead after Maenza ripped a 60-yard gain down to the 5 in the first quarter, but the Rams defense kept the Tigers out of the end zone, North Allegheny missed a field goal and the game remained scoreless.
A few seconds into the second quarter, Pine-Richland sophomore quarterback Cole Spencer polished off a long drive with a 1-yard run to take a 7-0 lead.
As it turned out, that would be the only Rams score of the game, thanks in part to 10 tackles and two sacks by senior linebacker Cade Hoke. Pine-Richland was 1 for 5 on fourth-down conversion attempts.
“To hold them to seven points is just unreal,” Walker said. “We made our adjustments [at halftime] and calmly went over it … I talked about some plays we wanted to run, and some things we wanted to expose, and then we just said ‘Let’s go do it.’ The kids had a lot of fight still left in them and they understood it was close. We almost scored on the opening drive and we got nothing out of it, we had a turnover, and I thought they wanted to fix that. So they did it in the second half.”
Trailing by seven late in the third quarter, the Tigers put together a 15-play drive, capped by a 12-yard touchdown run by senior running back Sam Gelosh to tie it. North Allegheny scored on its next possession, courtesy of an 8-yard touchdown run by Petschke, to go up, 14-7, with 10:57 to play in the fourth quarter.
Petschke completed 4 of 11 passes for 13 yards and rushed for 67 yards on 16 carries. The Tigers stuck to a simple “up the middle” approach in the second half, Petschke said, adding “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“It’s just the heart,” Petschke said of North Allegheny’s second-half efforts. “Every down. It was just going 100 percent. It was amazing. It’s just a grind every down. It was a surprise after that big, long run, getting stopped [in the first quarter]. But we had the heart to keep going.”
Junior running back Luke Meckler led Pine-Richland with 115 rushing yards on 28 carries. Spencer, who completed 2 of 13 passes for 12 yards, added 41 yards rushing yards on 20 carries.
The Tigers outgained the Rams, 358174.