Crescent-News.com - Napoleon overcomes 17-point deficit

By BRUCE HEFFLINGER
hefflinger@crescent-news.com
LIMA - Only the Dow seemed to be in worse shape than Napoleon on Friday.

The Wildcats fell behind 17-0 after one quarter of play but took advantage of Lima Senior mistakes to pull away from the Spartans for a 35-24 Greater Buckeye Conference victory at Lima Stadium.

"We talked all week that the most important thing was to get on top early," said Napoleon coach Tory Strock. "But everything went opposite. It was like a bad dream."

Fortunately for Strock, his Wildcats woke up. But not before Lima Senior put a scare in the defending GBC champs.

The hosts needed just five plays to go 67 yards on the opening drive of the game, capped off by a 28-yard touchdown run by Chaz Foster.

A bad snap on a punt attempt gave the Spartans possession at the Napoleon 41 minutes later and Lima Senior capitalized with a 31-yard Casey Reed field goal for a 10-0 advantage.

Then turnovers came into play.

A Jason Ward interception gave the Spartans possession but Lima was forced to punt. However, the referees ruled Napoleon touched the punt as it bounced downfield and Lima took over at the Napoleon 31. Three plays after the turnover, Foster rambled 19 yards to paydirt for a 17-0 lead with six seconds still to go in the opening stanza.

"I was shellshocked," admitted Strock. "We were not ready to play and that can not happen. They came excited to play football. We got a wakeup call and were lucky it was not too late."

The Wildcats responded to the deficit in a big way. With the help of two Lima turnovers and five penalties for 60 yards in the second quarter alone, Napoleon scored 21 points to take a 21-17 lead into half.

Jason Brown scored first for the Cats on a 4-yard run at the 7:42 mark of the period. However, an 81-yard kickoff return by Cortey Edwards put Lima back in business at the Napoleon 12. But three plays resulted in seven yards and a 32-yard field goal was off the mark.

A 58-yard Brown ramble and a 15-yard Andrew Keller pass to Nick Rettig set up a 1-yard John Weaver run behind a power block by Josh Cox to trim the deficit to 17-14.

Brown then stripped the ball from Lima's Adrian Nichols on the ensuing kickoff and Robert Gilson recovered at the Lima 29.

"We were being very consistent in the first quarter and we kept Napoleon off-balance on offense," Lima coach Darnell Collins noted. "But then we had turnovers and they were able to turn it around."

A 15-yard interference penalty moved the ball deeper into Lima territory following the fumble and Napoleon then came up with perhaps the biggest play of the game.

On third-and-five from the Lima 9-yard line, the Wildcats executed a screen pass to perfection. Keller hit Brown on the short side of the field and, with the help of downfield blocks by Chase Heinze and Clint Detmer, Brown went untouched into the end zone for a 21-17 lead with 2:33 left in the half.

"They're very aggressive," Strock explained. "They had been bringing a guy off the edge all night. We said if he was coming off the edge they'd have nobody to defend it (the screen)."

Said Heinze: "It's something we practice every week. It was a good call at the time. Me and (Mitch) Beals have the outside linebacker to cover."

A 12-play, 52-yard drive that consumed 5:30 of the third quarter resulted in a 28-17 Napoleon lead, the touchdown coming on fourth-and-three from the Lima 7-yard line when Strock opted to not go for the field goal.

"We had a play we put in at halftime," Strock said of the TD in which Keller faked an inside trap to Brown, a play that had proven successful in the game to that point, then optioned left and pitched to Brandon Hummer who easily scored. "We felt we had a good play for that situation."

It also meant the Spartans (2-6, 0-3) had to play from further behind, meaning more passing and less of Foster.

"After we went down we had to put the ball in the air more and he became a non-factor," Collins said of Foster, who ran 10 times for 58 yards in the first quarter but had just 10 more attempts for 36 yards the rest of the way. "We got in a predicament where we had to make plays and didn't. We've got a very young team that has to learn to overcome mistakes."

The Wildcats, which capped off their scoring with a 54-yard Brown run, did just that by overcoming a near-disastrous first quarter.

"It just seemed what could go wrong did," Heinze said of the start of the game. "Once we got past the mental errors and penalties we got things clicking."

The win kept the Wildcats perfect in the GBC at 3-0 while moving their overall record to 5-3 heading into Friday's GBC confrontation with Fremont Ross in Napoleon's home finale.

NAPOLEON LIMA SR.
First Downs 14 10
Rushing Yards 46-246 31-91
Passing Yards 74 156
Total Yards 320 247
Passing 9-16-1 12-18-1
Fumbles 2 6
Fumbles Lost 1 2
Penalties 2-13 10-110

Napoleon 0 21 7 7 - 35
Lima Sr. 17 0 0 7 - 24

Lima - Foster 28-yard run (Reed kick).
Lima - Reed 31-yard field goal.
Lima - Foster 19-yard run (Reed kick).
Napoleon - Brown 4-yard run (Detmer kick).
Napoleon - Weaver 1-yard run (Detmer kick).
Napoleon - Brown 9-yard pass from Keller (Detmer kick).
Napoleon - Hummer 7-yard run (Detmer kick).
Napoleon - Brown 54-yard run (Detmer kick).
Lima - Foster 9-yard run (Reed kick).

Rushing: Napoleon - Brown 12-143; Weaver 15-65; Hummer 13-42; Keller 4-8; Mathias 1-4; Harper 1- -16. Lima Senior - Foster 20-94; Harvey 3-7; Walker 1-2; Nichols 1-1; Edwards 1-0; Huchins 2- -6; Ward 3- -7.
Passing: Napoleon - Keller 9-15-1-74; Weaver 0-1-0-0. Lima Senior - Ward 8-11-1-126; Huchins 4-7-0-30.
Receiving: Napoleon - Brown 5-38; Bloom 2-22; Rettig 1-15; Detmer 1- -1. Lima Senior - Johnson 7-82; Walton 2-38; Nichols 1-17; Jacobs 1-13; Foster 1-9.