Local football roundup: Maples upend visiting Greyhounds, 15-8
Mapletown regained the lead in the second quarter and its defense shut out visiting Monessen over the final three quarters as the Maples earned a key Tri-County South victory, 15-8, on Friday night.
The win gives a boost to Mapletown’s playoff chances and knocked the Greyhounds out of a first-place tie in the conference.
Max Vanata found Brody Evans open for a 7-yard touchdown pass with 3:58 left in the first quarter. Landan Stevenson added the extra point.
But, the Greyhounds (2-1, 3-3) responded a minute later on Daevon Burke’s 80-yard touchdown run. Anthony Crews’ two-point run gave Monessen an 8-7 lead.
Stevenson scored the go-ahead — and eventual winning — touchdown at 9:41 of the second quarter when he sliced through the Monessen defense for a 26-yard scoring run. Mapletown faked the extra-point kick and Brody Evans hit Clay Menear with a two-point conversion pass to give Mapletown (1-2, 3-3) a 15-8 halftime lead.
Mapletown’s defense made the seven-point advantage stand up.
Stevenson rushed for 112 yards on 29 carries. Vanata completed 3-of-4 passes for 11 yards.
Burke ran for a game-high 116 yards on 10 carries. Lorenzo Gardner completed 3-of-11 passes for 10 yards.
Bentworth 49, Jefferson-Morgan 48 — The Bearcats stormed back from a 22-point third-quarter deficit to stun the visiting Rockets in a Tri-County South shootout.
Bentworth quarterback Seth Adams’ 9-yard touchdown run and Brendan Taylor’s extra point with 33 seconds left in the game gave the Bearcats their first lead of the night and the victory.
Adams tossed three touchdown passes and had three touchdown runs in rallying the Bearcats.
J-M’s Cole Jones threw three touchdown passes, all to Colt Fowler, and ran for another in the loss. Fowler also returned a punt for a score.
Fowler sparked J-M to an early 14-0 lead with a 55-yard touchdown reception from Jones and a 32-yard punt return for a score.
Bentworth (1-2, 2-3) pulled even at 14-14 as Adams threw touchdown passes to Vitali Daniels of 34 yards late in the first quarter and 11 yards early in the second.
Fowler grabbed a 37-yard touchdown pass from Jones but Adams countered with a 62-yard TD throw to Caleb Peternel to tie it at 20-20 with 6:43 left in the first half.
That was enough time for the Rockets (1-2, 1-5) to put up two more touchdowns before intermission on another 37-yard pass by Jones to Fowler and a 60-yard fumble return by Collin Besceglia to make it 36-20.
Jefferson-Morgan took a seemingly comfortable 42-20 lead on Josh Wise’s 5-yard touchdown run in the first minute of the third quarter.
The Bearcats kept coming, however.
Adams scored on touchdown runs of 12 and 14 yards as Bentworth whittled the gap to 42-35 heading into the fourth quarter, then pulled even on a 13-yard TD run by Peternel with 4:45 left in the game.
The Rockets quickly regained the lead on Jones’ 11-yard touchdown run with 3:15 left but the Bearcats stopped the two-point conversion run to stay within six and set up the winning TD and PAT by Adams and Taylor, respectively.
Taylor converted on five of six extra point attempts with the last one being the most pressure-packed and important.