The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Mayfield withstands rally
The Mayfield Wildcats faced adversity and overcame it on Sept. 14, coming away with a 43-23 win over visiting Nordonia.
The game had been halted one night earlier because of lightning – a part of the severe thunderstorms that invaded the area.
At that time, with 5:06 remaining in the first half, the Wildcats led the nonconference contest by a 27-0 count.
Having to deal with that overnight and through a roundtrip bus ride apparently did not sit well with the Knights (1-2), who stormed back to close to a 27-23 deficit. However, Mayfield (3-0) was able to right the ship and run off the game’s final 16 points for a 43-23 win.
“(Nordonia) did a good job, obviously watching film and picking on a few of our guys to ball up, and some of our guys made plays,” said Mayfield coach Ross Bandiera, who referred to an onside kick. “Football’s a crazy game. It started spiraling. But we overcame that, we took a few punches, and we fought back. I thought we did a good job to keep coming, and finish the job.”
“They’re very wellcoached, and they have very good players over there. I think it spiraled on them last night, and I think it spiraled on us a little bit today.”
Bandiera pointed to the fact his team didn’t punt on Sept. 13, but were forced to do so the first time they had the football on Sept. 14.
“They made some adjustments (on defense). They started bringing some linebackers,” he said. “We just got back to what we do well – and right now what we do well is run behind the big guys. We have a big running back (Joey Suchy), so we just kind of relied on them and leaned on them.”
Still, it wasn’t an easy task to turn things back around. Bandiera mentioned problems with penalties in the third period.
“Everything was going against us – everything,” he said. “So we just had to overcome that stuff.”