DUNMORE – One might figure that when both teams are without their starting offensive backfield, a football game might feature more passing than running.
That only held true for one team in Saturday’s game between Columbia-Montour Vo-Tech and Holy Cross, however. The Crusaders racked up 432 rushing yards while holding CMVT to -13 on the ground as Holy Cross topped the Rams, 54-22.
“We were without our starting tailback and fullback as well but the kids really stepped up that played in their place,” said Holy Cross coach Joe Giorgio. “It’s a good win for us. We wanted to establish the run and take it from there.”
“We saw film of them last week and pretty much all they did was throw the ball without any type of running game, so that’s what we prepared for all week and for the most part we did a pretty good job. We kept away from the big play and I thought our guys did a good job overall.”
CMVT, meanwhile, got 241 yards on 15-of-30 passing from Myles Koser as CMVT had 289 passing yards. But its backfield was missing both Tyson Brown, who was injured last week and is now out for the season, as well as Elijah Treon, who left the team after its win over Montrose two weeks ago.
“We worked all week on things but it’s tough to ask freshmen to jump in and do the job like a senior can do,” said Varner. “They were able to tee off on Myles. My hat’s off to him, he was beaten up today and he kept on going back in and throwing the ball.
“Tyson was the heart and soul of our team so that was a big blow with him going down last week. You have to give a lot of credit to Holy Cross as well. They brought the pressure. Their front four is legit and they did a good job. We made some mental errors with offside penalties, some missed blocking assignments, and those little things halted some drives and you can’t have that when you lose guys like we’ve lost guys and we just had too many mental errors to win a game.”
Holy Cross’ rushing performance was highlighted by a 219-yard performance by Kevin Vincent, who scored five touchdowns. The Crusaders also got 150 passing yards on 6-of-10 passing from freshman quarterback Chase Rutkoski.
The Crusaders amassed their 432 rushing yards on only 32 carries, an average of 13.5 yards. Holy Cross had 12 total plays of 15 yards or more, including six plays of 35 yards or more. The Rams were plagued by several missed tackles throughout the game, which helped create or extend some of those long plays.
“It wasn’t just the tackling that was the issue, but we weren’t in the right spots for the right plays,” said Varner. “If they’re in twins or in trips or whatever, we need to change where we are to keep leverage on the defense so we can tackle with leverage. What we were doing was we were getting our of our fit and then we weren’t tackling with leverage, so we were chasing and reaching. But we’ll keep on moving forward and hopefully our young kids will get some experience and we’ll see what happens next week.”
The Crusaders committed their only turnover of the game on their opening possession, but the Rams were unable to take advantage of it, and from that point forward, Holy Cross scored on its next three possessions. After the first half halted its next drive and being forced to punt on its first second half drive, Holy Cross ended the game with touchdowns on its last five possessions.
Vincent punched in his first of five scores on the afternoon from a yard out to give Holy Cross a 7-0 lead with :26 left in the first quarter.
Vincent found the end zone from four yards out at the 7:13 mark of the second quarter, which came two plays after a 51-yard pickup by the senior receiver-turned running back.
Later in the second quarter, Rutkoski found Luca Berardi for a 62-yard touchdown reception, and then also hit Berardi for the two-point conversion to put the Crusaders up 21-0.
The Rams were also to find the end zone before the end of the half as Myles Koser found Axton Koser for a seven-yard touchdown pass just before halftime to cut the halftime lead to 21-8.
Vincent recorded touchdown runs of 71 and 14 yards in the third quarter to cap three and four-play scoring drives, respectively, for the Crusaders.
Vincent put a cap in his afternoon with a 42-yard touchdown run to go over the 200-yard mark early in the fourth quarter. Chris Transue, who had 98 rushing yards on the afternoon himself, added a 52-yard touchdown later in the fourth quarter, while Dean Mushow wrapped up the scoring with a 62-yard touchdown with 1:33 left in the game.
The Rams scored a pair of touchdowns in the second half on long touchdown passes from Myles Koser to Blake Sponenberg. The duo connected for a 34-yard touchdown pass with 4:19 left in the third quarter, which cut the Holy Cross lead to 28-14. Koser also hit Sponenberg down the right sideline for a 65-yard score on a fourth-and-11 play later in the fourth quarter.
Holy Cross 54, Columbia-Montour Vo-Tech 22
CMVT (3-2) 0 8 6 8 – 22
Holy Cross (2-3) 7 14 13 20 – 54
First quarter
:26 – (HC) Kevin Vincent 1-yard run (Schaeffer kick), 9-79, 4:50
Second quarter
7:13 – (HC) Kevin Vincent 4-yard run (kick blocked), 6-77, 3:34
4:02 – (HC) Luca Berardi 62-yard pass from Chase Rutkoski (Berardi pass from Rutkoski), 2-69, :53
:59 – (VT) Axton Koser 7-yard pass from Myles Koser (A. Koser pass from M. Koser), 7-65, 3:03
Third quarter
6:10 – (HC) Kevin Vincent 71-yard run (Schaeffer kick), 3-80, 1:27
4:19 – (VT) Blake Sponenberg 34-yard pass from Myles Koser (pass failed), 3-59, 1:51
2:04 – (HC) Kevin Vincent 14-yard run (kick blocked), 4-51, 2:15
Fourth quarter
10:46 – (HC) Kevin Vincent 42-yard run (Schaeffer kick), 1-42, :14
5:03 – (HC) Chris Transue 52-yard run (kick blocked), 5-74, 3:10
2:37 – (VT) Blake Sponenberg 65-yard pass from Myles Koser (Moyer run), 4-64, 2:26
1:33 – (HC) Dean Mushow 62-yard run (Schaeffer kick), 2-60, 1:04
Statistics
VT HC
First downs 13 19
Rushes-net yards 20-(-13) 32-432
Passing yardage 289 150
Passing 16-31-3-1 6-10-1-0
Fumbles-lost 5-0 1-1
Penalties-yards 8-50 7-55
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING: CMVT: Myles Koser (10-20), Keegan Moyer (6-(-16)), Team (3-(-29)), Axton Koser (1-12); Holy Cross: Kevin Vincent (11-219-5), Chris Transue (11-98-1), Henry Chilewski (4-36), Noah Davis (3-14), Dean Mushow (1-62-1), Luca Berardi (1-3), Chase Rutkoski (1-0)
PASSING: CMVT: Myles Koser (15-30-241-3-1), Axton Koser (1-1-48-0-0); Holy Cross: Chase Rutkoski (6-10-150-1-0)
RECEIVING: CMVT: Axton Koser (7-63-1), Blake Sponenberg (4-137-2), Matthew Allen (3-41), Myles Koser (1-48), Jacob Steward (1-0); Holy Cross: Jonathan Mills (4-70), Luca Berardi (1-62-1), Kevin Vincent (1-18)