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Warriors start season with gut-check win
Guy Cipriano Sun-Gazette
Staff
It all looked so simple on
Lycoming’s fourth offensive play of the second half Saturday against
King’s.
Senior wide receiver Ricky
Lannetti ran a simple route, junior quarterback Phil Mann threw a
simple pass and senior offensive lineman Matt Mendola made a simple
up-field block.
The simple play helped
the Warriors’ offense do something that appeared tough in the first
half of their opener against the defending Middle Atlantic
Conference champions — score offensive points.
Lannetti turned a screen pass into a
64-yard touchdown with his team trailing 14-2 early in the third
quarter. The touchdown was the first of three the Warriors’ scored
during the third quarter of a 31-21 season-opening victory at David
Person Field.
“I thought that was a
major turning point,” Lycoming coach Frank Girardi said.
Nobody who spent 3 hours and 15 minutes
in the rain and mud watching this game
disagreed.
“He,” King’s coach Rich
Manello said referring to Lannetti, “made a couple of guys miss on
that long screen and then we couldn’t break anything on our side to
sustain the momentum
offensively.”
Lannetti had better
memories of the play.
“It’s a simple
play,” he said. “I’m just jabbing forward and going back and then
Phil’s tossing it out to me. Our lineman is coming out to pick off
their corner and the rest is up to me, and I just have to make one
guy miss. Phil did a great job of getting it out
there.”
After Lannetti ran more than 60
yards down the left side of the field, Lycoming (1-0) had the points
and confidence it desperately needed.
The
Warriors recorded 216 yards of total offense during the quarter,
almost double the total they produced during the first half.
Lannetti, who caught three passes for 16 yards in the first half,
had five receptions for 127 yards during the third quarter.
Mann, a Central Mountain graduate, also
had a big quarter, completing 9-of-13 passes for 154 yards. A
combination of King’s blitz packages and the weather limited Mann to
completing just 6-of-20 passes for 61 yards in the first half.
Mann’s fortunes changed when Lycoming
used a no-huddle offense to start the second half.
“I think the key was that we went to a
no huddle to upset the rhythm a little big,” Girardi said. “It also
took them out of their blitz package and allowed us to throw those
intermediate routes. Under these weather conditions Phil did a heck
of a job and our receivers did a heck of a
job.”
Mann completed two passes after the
fourth quarter and finished 19-of-39 with 243 yards and two
interceptions. Lannetti, who finished with 143 yards on eight
receptions, didn’t catch a pass after the third quarter.
The Warriors took their first lead six
minutes into the third when fullback Robert Miller, a Milton
graduate who had a team-high 72 yards on 14 carries, scored on a
12-yard run through the middle of the Monarchs’ defense. Lycoming
increased its lead to 24-14 on a one-yard run by Mann with 38
seconds remaining in the third.
“That
quarter was awesome,” Lannetti said. “We knew we had it in us. After
the slow start, we still knew what our offense is capable of. We
have a lot of senior leadership and it was just bound to
happen.”
It didn’t take as long for
Lycoming’s defense to jell.
The Warriors
held King’s (1-1) to seven points and 134 yards in the first half.
The Monarchs one big offensive play came on the third play of the
third quarter when Richard Jackson ran 66 yards for a touchdown.
Jackson finished with 157 yards on 30 carries, but he had less than
40 yards on 12 carries after the touchdown
run.
“We had them scouted pretty good and
we knew what was coming,” said senior defensive lineman Sean
McGinley, who had a team-high eight tackles. “The offense had some
struggles in the first half, but they came together at the end and
the defense did a great job.”
Lycoming
forced four King’s turnovers, including two interceptions during the
second half. Junior Nick Pinto, making his first start, had two
interceptions.
King’s decreased the lead
to 24-21 when quarterback David Hessler completed a 10-yard
touchdown pass to Julian Walker with 9:37 remaining. Less than eight
minutes later, sophomore Luke Sterling recovered a Hessler fumble in
the end zone to end King’s hopes of defeating Lycoming for the first
time since 1950.
“This is huge,” McGinley
said. “They are the defending MAC champions and we had to show the
league that we are for real still. We were picked to win the MAC and
we did what we had to do to win.”
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Sports Date Posted:
9/13/2003 |
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As appearing in Saturday - September 13, 2003 edition
of The Sun-Gazette
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