Matt Sieg rushed for three touchdowns and passed for another score to help unbeaten Fort Cherry to a 27-20 victory over Cornell Friday night in a WPIAL Class A quarterfinal playoff game at West Allegheny High School.
Sieg, the Rangers’ talented junior quarterback, rushed for 185 yards on 30 carries and scored on runs of 3, 4 and 21 yards as Fort Cherry improved to 13-0 and booked a ticket to next week’s semifinals against Jeannette, a winner over Greensburg Central Catholic Friday night.
“Our kids played bell to bell – we competed from the start of the game to the end of the game.”
– Cornell Coach Ed Dawson
Cornell, which finished its season 9-3, jumped out to a 12-0 first-quarter lead on Khylil Johnson’s 56-yard run and a 1-yard touchdown run from Walter Clarit. But Sieg’s two short touchdown runs and a pair of PATs from Nick Massey enabled Fort Cherry to take a 14-12 lead at halftime.
Sieg’s 12-yard touchdown pass to Shane Cornali and Massey’s PAT widened the Rangers’ lead to 21-12, and Sieg’s 21-yard scoring burst made it 27-12, and that proved to be all the breathing room Fort Cherry needed heading into the fourth quarter.
Mark Stuckey’s 17-yard touchdown pass to Santana Lee, and Johnson’s two-point conversion run enabled Cornell to cut the deficit to 27-20, but the Raiders could get no closer.
Still, Cornell coach Ed Dawson wasn’t disappointed in his team’s performance.
“Our kids played bell to bell – we competed from the start of the game to the end of the game,” he said. “We jumped out to a 12-0 lead, but we knew it would be tough to keep them at bay the entire game. They got going and took that lead into the half, and we were playing from behind the rest of the game.
“We clawed back – they were up two scores and we got it to one, but we just ran out of gas.”
Complicating matters was the fact that Cornell lost one of its top defensive players – linebacker Ashton Jones – to a foot injury late in the first half and he was unable to return.
“It made a huge difference not having our leader on the field,” he said. “It’s unfortunate for his career to end on an injury. My heart goes out to him.”
As for Sieg, Dawson said the Rangers do a good job of putting him in positions to be successful.
“They out-leverage you at times – and they play fast,” he said.
Dawson said Fort Cherry had a distinct numbers advantage in the game in that the Rangers’ dressed about two dozen more players than the Raiders did.
“The law of attrition takes care of itself – late in games, late in the half,” he said. “That’s not to take anything away from what they do. But that’s the way it falls when you have a small roster and the other team’s playing hurry-up. At that point it becomes a bit of a struggle at critical times in games.
“But we fought. It was never a runaway game. The thing I love about this group is they compete week in and week out.”
The Raiders held their own on the stat sheet, finishing with 223 total yards to Fort Cherry’s 257, including 184 on the ground to the Rangers’ 199. Johnson finished with 86 yards on four attempts and Clarit added 50 on 21 carries for Cornell.
Bishop Canevin 17, South Side 13
Jermell Lyndsey’s 1-yard touchdown run midway through the fourth quarter lifted Bishop Canevin past stubborn South Side in a Class A quarterfinal playoff game at South Fayette High School.
With the hard-fought win, the third-seeded Crusaders improved to 9-2 overall heading into next week’s semifinal matchup with No. 2 seed Clairton, a 54-0 blowout winner over No. 10 California.
“They took us down to the wire – it was a hard-fought game.”
– Canevin Coach Rich Johnson
Bishop Canevin, coming off an easy first-round win over Bentworth, found itself in a dogfight with the Rams Friday night. Crusaders coach Rich Johnson was not surprised, given that South Side runs an offense – the Wing-T – that’s difficult to prepare for.
“That’s one of those teams you hate playing, especially in the playoffs,” he said. “No one runs (that offense) and they run it to perfection. Those kids are very happy to get three or four yards a play. It shows the unselfishness of their culture and their program.
“They took us down to the wire – it was a hard-fought game.”
South Side dominated the time of possession, but the difference was a couple of big plays – one that wound up in the end zone and the other that took the ball to the doorstep – for the Crusaders.
“We let our athletes be athletes,” Johnson said of Kole Olszewski’s 73-yard touchdown pass to Damar Olds and a 64-yard completion from Olszewski to Justin Melvin that set up Jermell Lyndsey’s winning touchdown from a yard out.
“We were able to get the ball in a couple of kids’ hands, and they made big plays.”
Johnson also saluted his defense. “They came up big,” he said. “We have multiple seniors and they didn’t want their season to end this week.”
South Side got on the scoreboard first, using its Wing-T attack to mount a lengthy drive that culminated in Andrew Corfield’s 1-yard touchdown run with a little less than two minutes remaining in the first quarter, and a failed PAT attempt left South Side with a 6-0 lead.
Bishop Canevin cut that lead in half with 6 minutes, 51 seconds remaining in the second quarter when Leo Shorthouse converted an 18-yard field.
South Side had another scoring opportunity before halftime, driving deep into Bishop Canevin territory before fumbling inside the Crusaders’ 20-yard line.
Bishop Canevin turned the ball over at its own 22-yard line on the first play of the second half, but the Crusaders’ Aaryn Edwards picked off a Dawson Frasier pass to quell that threat.
The Crusaders vaulted in front with 3:46 to play in the third quarter when Olszewski found
Olds on a 73-yard touchdown pass, and Shorthouse’s PAT gave Bishop Canevin a 10-6 lead.
Corfield answered that score with a little less than 9 minutes to play in the fourth quarter when he went in from 4 yards out, capping a drive that took nearly seven minutes, and Mateja Pavlovich’s PAT gave South Side a 13-10 lead.
But Bishop Canevin responded less than two minutes later. Olszewski’s 64-yard pass to Melvin moved the ball to the South Side 1-yard line, and Lyndsey punched it in for the touchdown. Shorthouse’s PAT lengthened the Crusaders’ lead to 17-13.
South Side had one last gasp and moved from its own 15 to near midfield before stalling out.
Olszewski completed 12 of 25 passes for 251 yards and was intercepted once to go with his touchdown pass to Olds, who caught three passes for 77 yards.
The Crusaders were unable to mount much of a ground attack against the Rams, as Olszewski was his team’s top rusher with 35 yards on four carries.
“They came in with the mindset of stopping the run,” Johnson said of South Side. “They loaded the box, and we didn’t make the adjustments necessary to run the ball. But we got our guys on the outside to step up, and they made some big plays.”
South Side, meanwhile, had no trouble moving on the ground, as Corfield and Pavlovich combined to rush for more than 200 yards. Corfield finished with over 100 yards on the ground to go with his two touchdowns.
Johnson knows his team will have a major challenge next week in No. 2 seed Clairton, but he wasn’t ready to look ahead just yet.
“We knew if we happened to win who we were going to see,” he said. “We knew Clairton had a very winnable game in their favor.
“But we’ll live in the moment right now.”
Photos by Mike Longo Jr.
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