Football defeats Finneytown 28-16

The football team won a hard fought, exciting game at Finneytown on Friday night.

Finneytown started impressively, scoring touchdowns on their first two possessions to take a 14-0 lead.  Their first drive was nine plays for 65 yards and their second was 10 plays for 56 yards.

After going three and out on our first possession, we went three and in on the second - two Will Marty to Max Kadish passes for 17 and 23 yards and a 16 yard Phillip Schuholz run made it 14-7.  After the defense forced Finneytown to punt on its next possession, and a penalty on Finneytown, our second scoring "drive" was one play - a 64 yard pass from Will to Max.

It got a little weird toward the end of the first half.  We gave up a safety, but Finneytown fumbled Dawson Roger's ensuing punt, and Casey Howell recovered it.  We couldn't do anything with it and had to punt.  On the ensuing possession Finneytown fumbled again.  Three Phillip runs later and he had his second TD of the night.  We thus went into the locker room with a 21-16 lead.

Brian Anderson intercepts a pass.  Max, luckily, does not make the tackle.

The second half was a story of three long, clock-eating drives.  While in the first half the teams combined for 13 drives, the second half only had five.  We only ran three offensive plays in the entire fourth quarter and had zero net yards!

We took the second half kickoff and marched from our 25 down to the Finneytown three yard line, but on fourth and goal we couldn't get into the end zone.  Finneytown then took 16 plays to go 38 yards before turning it over on downs.  We then went three and out.  Finneytown then methodically marched down the field, eating up the clock as they went.  With under 1:30 remaining, they were third and one at our two yard line.  Our coaching staff had already started calling timeouts during Finneytown's possession so that there would be as much time as possible left for our offense once Finneytown scored and took the lead.

Alas for Finneytown, that was not to be.  They snapped the ball over their quarterback's head, Terry Davis and Dennis Austin kept their QB from recovering it, and Max Kadish scooped it up and ran it back 70 yards for a TD.  You can see the video here.

Max scoops up the fumble.  Check out the two Finneytown players lamenting this turn of events.

Next up: last game of the regular season at home Friday at 7:30 vs. Madeira.  The Mustangs come into the game with a perfect 9-0 record.  It is also senior night.

Photo gallery here.