PLAINS — Two buckets of water in hand, Ciro Cinti’s Wilkes-Barre Area football players sneakily got in position behind their head coach. And in one swift motion, those two buckets of water were dumped over the veteran coach’s head.
On a night where everything was already wet and cold because of a steady rain shower which moved through the area, those two buckets of water still caught Cinti off guard. But it was a bath well worth it.
Wilkes-Barre won its first subregional championship Friday night defeating Williamsport, 41-14, in the District 2/4 Class 6A championship game. Jake Howe threw for three touchdowns and ran for two more as he passed Berwick’s Ron Powlus for the most career passing yards in Wyoming Valley Conference history. And the Wolfpack were a picture of efficiency as they avenged a loss to the Millionaires from two weeks ago, and a loss in this same subregional final a year ago.
“If we didn’t win this game, it would have been a black mark on our season,” Cinti said. “We’re going to be playing a special team next week, but it doesn’t matter because we got this far and we got further than any team in Wilkes-Barre Area history has gone.”
Wilkes-Barre’s reward for last night’s win is a date next week at District 6 champion State College. The Little Lions won their own subregional last night, defeating McDowell (Erie), 41-7.
“This meant everything to us,” Wilkes-Barre’s Treyvon Gembitski said. “Two weeks ago when we played them, things just didn’t go as planned, and sometimes it goes like that. But we came out tonight and we knew what the mission was. We knew what we wanted and we were all on the same page. And when we’re all on the same page, the Wolfpack is scary.”
Wilkes-Barre’s efficient offense which averaged more than 6 yards per play may get the headlines, especially as Howe checked off another accomplishment in his career by passing Powlus. But it was what the Wolfpack did defensively which stood out.
Two weeks ago the Millionaires scored 28 points and threw for more than 200 yards. Quarterback Tevin Williams extended plays and completed 65% of his attempts to keep Wilkes-Barre on its heels. Friday night, while Williams was on the run again thanks to a relentless Wolfpack pass rush, he had nowhere to go with the football.
Wilkes-Barre contained the lanky sophomore with a howitzer on his right shoulder, not allowing him to run around to gain yards and move the sticks. And in the secondary, Wilkes-Barre locked down receivers at all levels of the defense. Williams completed just 8 of 29 passes for 71 yards Friday night. He ran for just 25 more yards. And the Millionaires’ lone touchdown with both first teams on the field was a masterclass of making something out of nothing by Williams. But it wasn’t sustainable over 48 minutes.
“We know (Williams) is a good player and a good athlete, but we wanted to contain him and we did,” said Gembitski, who forced a fumble and intercepted a pass. “Our defensive line played outstanding. I can’t be any more proud of them.”
“We put in a couple different schemes to keep him in the box because he killed us last time getting outside with his legs,” Cinti said. “We limited those big plays and that was the key.”
With the Williamsport offense stalling more than a car that ran out of gas, the Wilkes-Barre offense did what it does best and got the football in its playmakers’ hands. Howe and Davon Underwood beat a blitz in the first quarter with a swing pass which the running back took 32 yards untouched for a touchdown. Howe found Kevon Creech on a deep ball for a 37-yard gain to the Williamsport 1 which Howe punched in on the next play. And the Wolfpack took advantage of a fourth-down offsides penalty on the Millionaires to extend a drive in the red zone and add an Underwood touchdown run to go up 21-0 less than 14 minutes into the game.
Howe distributed the football to his legions of playmakers like a basketball point guard. He got the ball in their hands with room to operate, and his teammates took over from there. Howe completed his 17 passes to five receivers, all of which caught multiple balls. Underwood, Creech and Gembitski each scored touchdowns, and each in a different manner.
Underwood utilized the open space of the swing pass. Creech caught a dime of a fade pass from Howe for a 20-yard score. And Gembitski danced through the Williamsport secondary on a bubble screen to score from 9 yards out.
Howe finished 17 of 30 for 243 yards, giving him 7,370 career passing yards. His mark surpassed the 7,339 throw for by Powlus, the 1992 Gatorade National Player of the Year for Berwick. Howe now has that record to go with the WVC career touchdown passes record which he broke earlier this season.
“I’m just distributing to the guys,” Howe said. “I’m having a blast. It’s like I’m a basketball player and I have 20 assists a game. We have five, six, seven, eight guys that could play and can all start, and they’re all big playmakers in the open field.”
“He’s the best quarterback I’ve ever played with,” Gembitski said. “He can make any throw on the field, short, medium, or deep. Everybody here knows they can trust Jake because he’s been doing it since he was 14 on this field.”
Williamsport never really did find an answer for the Wolfpack’s offense. Wilkes-Barre scored a pair of touchdowns in each of the first three quarters before taking its foot off the gas when it invoked the mercy rule in the third quarter. And from there, the celebration was on, including the drenching of Cinti.
“When we lost this game last year we said we were going to come back and win it this time,” Cinti said. “We have all these different things on a board that we want to accomplish, and this is another check mark for us.”
Wilkes-Barre 42, Williamsport 14
Williamsport 0 7 0 7 – 14
Wilkes-Barre 14 14 14 0 – 42
First quarter
WBA—Davon Underwood 32 pass from Jake Howe (Jaedyn Sanchez kick), 8:53
WBA—Howe 1 run (Sanchez kick), 2:27
Second quarter
WBA—Underwood 5 run (Sanchez kick), 10:52
Will—Tevin Williams 2 run (Brayden Ungard kick), 5:25
WBA—Kevon Creech 20 pass from Howe (Sanchez kick), 1:46
Third quarter
WBA—Howe 15 run (Sanchez kick), 9:21
WBA—Treyvon Gembitski 9 pass from Howe (Sanchez kick), 5:23
Fourth quarter
Will—Giovanni White 1 run (Ungard kick), 3:38
Wil WBA
First downs 11 16
Rushes-yds 26-96 25-93
Com-att-int 8-29-1 17-30-1
Pass yards 71 243
Total yards 167 336
Fumbles-lost 3-1 1-0
Penalties-yards 8-65 3-25
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing—Williamsport, Giovanni White, 15-68, TD; Tevin Williams, 10-25, TD; Trey Damschroder, 1-3. Wilkes-Barre, Jake Howe, 11-79, 2 TDs; Davon Underwood, 3-12, TD; Gene Ardo, 3-2; Kelan Slivinski, 1-2; Dominic Mercadante, 1-2; Josiah Cannon, 1-2; Quadri Hubbard Jones, 1-(-2); Team, 1-(-4).
Passing—Williamsport, Williams, 8-29-1, 71 yds. Wilkes-Barre, Howe, 17-30-1, 243 yds., 3 TDs.
Receiving—Williamsport, Damschroder, 4-46; Lucas Naughton, 1-10; Brayden Ungard, 1-10; White, 1-7; Delante Haberstroh-Stotts, 1-(-2). Wilkes-Barre, Kevon Creech, 4-70, TD; Underwood, 4-48, TD; Jordan Kieselowsky, 4-41; Jonathan Otway-Kellom, 3-27; Treyvon Gembitski, 2-57, TD.
INTERCEPTIONS—Williamsport, Naughton; Wilkes-Barre, Gembitski.
RECORDS: Williamsport (6-6); Wilkes-Barre (8-4).