Pennsbury wakes up to fend off Abington
FAIRLESS HILLS, PA. >> You can sort of excuse the top-ranked Pennsbury High football team for taking a third-quarter siesta in its 52-21 win over Abington last night.
Between knowing it could run through the Ghosts at will and an incompetent flag-happy officiating crew, this was simply a tough game to watch.
Just asked the fans, who cleared out en masse before it was over in one of the longest games in the history of Falcon Field. Heck, even the bands had enough and weren’t to be seen in the second half.
What many people missed were two Abington touchdown passes from David Kretschman to George Reid in the second half that actually made it somewhat of a game as the Ghosts closed to win 36-21.
It was here where Pennsbury regained its focus and roared down the field to score on a 7-yard run by Rob Daly. Quarterback Mike Alley then later scored on a 9-yard keeper before both teams cleared the bench and the refs more or less finally kept the laundry in their pockets.
With the victory, Pennsbury improved to 4-1 heading into a Friday night game at Bensalem. Normally a force in the Suburban One National Leuage, Abington is now a dismal 0-5.
It was vintage Pennsbury football at the start as they scored 24 points in the first quarter, starting with a 4-yard run by rugged fullback Chris Rupprecht.
From there, Daulton Hose exploded through the Abington defense for a 29-yard touchdown run and Alley scored on a 1-yard run.
Abington got on the board when Reid returned a punt 60 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter. This TD was almost comical because in a first half in which the refs threw a penalty flag on nearly every other play, Reid’s TD was set up a blatant clip right in front of a ref’s face.
Suffice it to say he was probably the only one in the stadium who didn’t see the obvious penalty.
Abington’s touchdown was followed by two more TD runs by the weaving Hose, including a beautiful 21-yard effort in which he dove towards the end zone and just extented the ball over the goal line.
In addition to his three touchdowns, Hose led the Pennsbury Ground and Pound game with 173 yards on 15 carries. Rupprecht wasn’t far behind with 142 yards on 11 carries and Daly carried the ball five times for 72 yards.
After throwing three touchdown passes last week, this time Pennsbury completed just one of two passes for one yard. After often experiencing problems kicking extra points in their first four games, the Falcon also elected to go for two all evening. They were successful on five of their seven twopoint conversions. Rupprecht 4 run (Alley run) Hose 29 run (Rupprecht run) Alley 1 run (Alley run) Reid 60 punt return (kick good) Hose 1 run (run failed) Hose 21 run (pass failed) Reid 27 pass from Kretschman (kick good)
Reid 30 pass from Kretschman (kick good) Daly 7 run (Daly run) Alley 9 run (Daly run)
OTHER GAMES New Hope 25, Bristol 9 Maple Shade 7, Pitman 0 Woodrow Wilson 27, Palmyra 18 New Egypt 37, Wildwood 0