New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Staton, Notre Dame-WH able to march past Masuk
WEST HAVEN — It was a game Notre Dame-West Haven had to have to keep its CIAC Class M playoff hopes alive.
And in a wild, back and forth offensiveladen contest, the Green Knights knocked off Masuk, 54-35, in a Connecticut High School Football Alliance game Friday night at Veterans Field.
With a 3-3 record now, Notre Dame kept itself alive in the tight postseason race.
“We still have Xavier, West Haven and Hand left, so we’re just trying to go 1-0 every week,” Notre Dame coach Joe DeCaprio said. “I’m just proud of my team.”
DeCaprio knew it was going to be an offensive shootout since Masuk was averaging almost 43 points a game.
“We knew the Saccu brothers (Nick and Ryan) were fantastic and the surrounding players were very good. We saw what Hand did to them with the running game. We knew Jacob (Staton) had to rush for over 100 yards tonight.”
In fact, Staton was the
offensive star for Notre Dame as he scored four touchdowns and carried the ball 33 times for 199 yards.
“To us, that was our playoff game,” Staton said. “We needed that to have any chance to get in. We executed and the offensive line blocked and did their job. They showed up. The holes were everywhere.”
It was an unusually high amount of carries for Staton as Notre Dame abandoned the run-pass option
as the Panthers took it away for the most part, forcing both Staton and quarterback Matt Piechota (15-for-22 passing for 244 yards plus 11 rushes for 60 yards) to run the ball more.
‘Sometimes we call the run pass option, but we ended up running more off it and tonight he ended up with more carries on it,” DeCaprio said.
On the other side, Masuk (4-2) had a tough time defensively with Notre Dame, which controlled the line of scrimmage.
“We couldn’t get a stop and they ran right through us,” Masuk coach Steve Christy said. “It didn’t matter where we gave them the ball. It could have been at the 20, the 30 or the 40. We competed but it ran away from us in the second half.”
Early on, it became obvious that it was going to be high scoring shootout.
Nick Saccu (12 carries for 234 yards) got the Panthers on the board with a 43-yard run. But Piechota came right back with a nine-yard scamper of his own to make it 8-8 as each team made the two-point conversion.
A Piechota nine-yard pass to Austin Granata with five seconds remaining in the opening quarter gave the Green Knights a 16-8 edge.
The second quarter was back and forth again as Kyle Beckett scored from two yards out and Masuk quarterback Dylan Jackson connected with Ryan Saccu for a 38-yard touchdown pass that gave the Panthers a 21-16 edge.
Staton, however, scored from a yard out and Piechota connected with Granata for a six-yard TD poass to close out the first half as the Green Knights took the lead for good, 28-21, before intermission.
A 12-yard run by Piechota made it 34-21 before Jackson and Ryan Saccu connected again, this time for 29 yards to close it to 34-28.
Staton then scored three touchdowns in the final 12:16 of the night as Notre Dame expanded its lead in what turned out to be an 89-point night for the two teams.
“We’re going to get better on defense, but they played well enough to win,” DeCaprio said. “We could win 2-0 for all I care as long as we win.”
Meanwhile, Christy summed it up for his Panthers, who will fall a bit in a stacked CIAC Class L race.
“We have to score more points,” Christy said. “We didn’t score enough points tonight. We needed 55.”