Tigers
unrelenting in The Game
By CHRIS EASTERLING
The Independent
MASSILLON, OH —
If a piece of meat is dangled in front of a hungry tiger, that tiger is
sure to pounce on it. Likewise, the Massillon Tigers were hungry for a trip to
the playoffs as they walked into Paul Brown Tiger Stadium on Saturday
afternoon.
Seeing the opportunity for just such a trip, the Tigers pounced on it, and in
the process tore apart archrival McKinley as well.
With a nasty defense setting the tone, and J.T. Turner continuing his strong
season-ending push, the Tigers rolled over the Bulldogs 17-0 in front of 16,935
fans at sun-splashed Paul Brown Tiger Stadium on Saturday.
It is Massillon’s first shutout of McKinley since a 7-0 win in 1982, and the
first shutout in the series by either team since 1996. The Tigers have also won
four straight against McKinley, matching the sixth-longest win streak by a team
in the series.
“It’s just a ton of pressure taken off your chest,” Tiger outside linebacker
Brian Arelt said.
That win, coupled with Lorain Admiral King’s win over Lorain Southview, pushed
Massillon into the playoffs after a one-year absence. The Tigers – 6-4 on the
season – will now prepare for a trip to North Canton next Saturday evening to
meet Hoover in the first round of the Division I, Region 2 playoffs.
“Knowing that if we win, we’re in the playoffs, it put an extra chip on our
shoulders for McKinley just to go out there and rock some heads,” Tiger junior
tackle Jeff Myers said.
Myers and his offensive line mates certainly did just that, as they controlled
the line of scrimmage and allowed J.T. Turner to rush for 208 yards on 28
carries. It was Turner’s only touchdown of the afternoon – a 26-yard run with
7:38 remaining – which salted the game away and sent most of the red-clad
portion of the crowd toward the parking lot.
“It was special,” said Turner, who had a first-quarter touchdown run negated by
penalty. “Every time I score a touchdown, they usually take it back. I saw that
the first time, and then I got in there the second time, and I knew it was a
rout from there.”
Of course, it wasn’t so much Turner’s running and it was his hitting which set
the tone for Saturday’s game. On three of McKinley’s first four plays, Turner
delivered the blow to the Bulldog ballcarrier, forcing a punting situation.
When McKinley tried to fake the punt, it was Turner there again, blowing up the
play and forcing a five-yard loss. That gave Massillon the ball at the Bulldog
31, field position it turned into a 3-0 lead on a 33-yard Jeremy Geier field
goal with 1:57 left in the first quarter.
“I just knew I had to lead this team to victory,” Turner said. “Everybody was
on my shoulders, so I just led the team to victory. And we were able to come
out with a 17-0 victory.”
The Tigers’ first scoring drive may have also set the tone for the kind of game
it was offensively for Massillon, one which was mired with penalties and
turnovers. An illegal procedure penalty on a second-and-1 play from the Bulldog
2 pushed the ball back five yards, and eventually led to the Tigers having to
kick the field goal.
Massillon had another promising drive short-circuited by what amounted to a
22-yard illegal block penalty, one of five penalties for 70 yards in losses for
the Tigers. That doesn’t account for the four turnovers as well, two of which
came on fumbles immediately after the Tigers had regained possession from
McKinley, once on an interception and another time on a punt.
Those self-inflicted wounds were a big reason why Massillon was only able to
take a 10-0 lead into the locker room at halftime, a lead it gained when Bo
Grunder caught a 26-yard touchdown pass from Robert Partridge with 6:48 left in
the half.
“We were a little disappointed, because I thought we weren’t able to take
advantage of all of our opportunities,” Tiger coach Jason Hall said. “We shot
ourselves in the foot a couple of times. I think walking off the field at
halftime, I thought we took control of the game.”
And the Tigers can thank their defense for that fact. With the front seven
providing the pressure, McKinley was unable to consistently get anything going
on offense, a fact reflected by the 97 total yards it mustered in the game.
“We were just going to make a point that they can’t do anything on us,” Tiger
defensive end Matt Rose said. “We just bowed up and showed them what we’re made
of.”
A big reason for that was the aforementioned pressure Massillon was able to get
on Bulldog quarterback Kyle Ohradzansky, who regularly found himself ducking
and dodging Tiger defenders when he dropped back to pass. Ohradzansky was
sacked six times on the afternoon, three of those in the fourth quarter.
By the end of the day, the beating he was taking was starting to show on the
sophomore quarterback, who took longer and longer to get up off the ground with
each hit.
“Personally, at the end of the game, I felt bad for him a little bit,” Arelt
said with a smile.
But not bad enough that Arelt and his teammates weren’t celebrating another win
over McKinley – as well as a return to the playoffs.
Massillon 17,
McKinley 0
at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium
McKinley 00 00 00 00 00
Massillon 03 07 00 07 17
SCORING SUMMARY
Mas – Geier 33 FG
Mas – Grunder 26 pass from Partridge (Geier
kick)
Mas – Turner 26 run (Geier kick)
Mas McK
First downs 10 16
Rushes-yards 45-50 48-287
Att.-Comp.-Int. 7-10-1 3-5-1
Passing yards 47 48
Fumbles-lost 3-3 4-3
Penalty yards 8-50 5-70
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing
Massillon
Turner 28-208 TD;
Roberson
9-44;
Partridge
7-23;
Reiman
3-10;
Clark
1-2
McKinley:
M.
Williams 31-97;
Wilder
4-10.
Passing
Massillon:
Partridge 3-5-48 TD, INT.
McKinley:
Ohradzansky
7-10-47 INT.
Receiving
Massillon:
Grunder 1-26 TD;
Mattox
1-16;
Clark
1-6.
McKinley:
Morrow
2-17;
Shepherd
1-9;
Wilder
1-9;
Powell
1-8;
Farrakhan
1-7;
M.
Williams 1-(-3).
Records:
Massillon 6-4;
McKinley 6-4.
Tiger defense
makes
a big impact,
early and
often
By DAVID HARPSTER
The Independent
MASSILLON, OH —
It didn’t take long for the Massillon Tiger
defense to announce its presence in Saturday’s 117th renewal of the
Massillon-McKinley rivalry at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
Actually it only took the first few plays of
McKinley’s opening series, when Massillon senior cornerback J.T. Turner came up
and laid consecutive loud hits on McKinley tailback Monterae Williams. The tone
had been set and the Tigers followed Turner’s lead by swarming to the ball and
attacking relentlessly in what was an eventual 17-0 victory over their
archrivals.
“Justin set the tone early with a couple big
hits,” Massillon coach Jason Hall said. “It looks like (Williams) might have
some room to run and then, bam, Justin comes in with a big hit. Stuff like that
really sparks a defensive group and I was a defensive guy, so I’m jumping
around on the sidelines after that.”
Added safety Cooper Ivan, who summed up
McKinley’s first series pretty succinctly: “We tried to come out and smack them
in the mouth on the first play of the game and that’s what we did. It helped
set the tone for the game.”
By no means was keeping McKinley off the scoreboard
an easy task for the Massillon defense, as the Tigers had to contend with
sudden changes in momentum after their four turnovers. Each time, though,
Massillon was able to find a way to repel the Bulldogs by making a big play
when it was necessary.
“That’s always one of our goals: No
touchdowns in sudden change situations,” defensive coordinator Steve Kovacs
said. “That’s something that you work on and you try to prepare for them as
best you can. McKinley’s a good football team and they had some guys who we
were worried about getting loose. They just weren’t able to get loose today.”
Turner kept up the heat early by following up
his big hits with a rush that led to McKinley’s punter being tackled for a
loss, helping to set up an early field goal. Turner then stripped the ball from
McKinley’s Alaun Morrow following a short reception, a turnover that led to
Massillon’s first touchdown of the game and a 10-0 lead.
But Turner was far from the only Tiger doing
damage on defense.
Ivan flew around the field with his usual
reckless abandon, in the process notching a pair of sacks and a forced fumble.
If Ivan wasn’t getting to the quarterback on safety blitzes up the middle, then
Jamison Heath-Gates or Matt Rose or Brian Arelt or another Tiger was making
life miserable for McKinley sophomore quarterback Kyle Ohradzansky.
“The best pass defense is pressure, so every
game we go into, regardless of who the quarterback is, we’re going to find ways
to pressure him,” Kovacs said. “Our guys did a good job and we’ve got some good
quickness up front.”
Once one Massillon player got his name in the
sack column, it appeared to be an open race to see who would be the next Tiger
to take down Ohradzansky. The McKinley quarterback become the Tigers’ own
personal chew toy in the second half, as he was sacked six times for 46 yards
in losses while also absorbing countless other hits from rampaging Massillon
defenders.
“The entire defensive line, it was just like
we weren’t going to let him get the ball off,” Rose said. “We all just wanted
to punish him when he dropped back to pass. We just wanted to show him what
Massillon Tiger football was like.
“We had him dazed and wondering where it was
coming from there at the end. They were pretty confused about where the rush was
coming from and all our blitzes were working.”
Hall chalked up McKinley’s general confusion on offense to Massillon’s ability
to hide its defensive schemes for the most part.
“The defensive game plan that Steve and the
staff put together, they did a great job disguising a lot of things,” Hall
said. “I don’t think their quarterback could figure out what we were doing.
We’d disguise some of our blitzes and we got some free hits today. Anytime you
can do that, then the quarterback is thinking about where it’s coming from.”
The pressure not only resulted in four
McKinley turnovers and the first Massillon shutout of McKinley since 1982, but
also put the Bulldogs in numerous long-yardage situations on second and third
down. McKinley was 1-of-12 in third-down situations.
“Not many offenses, at any level, are going
to be good when it’s third-and-10 or third-and-15 all game long,” Hall said. “I
thought our defense did a great job all game making them fight out of a hole
from a down and distance standpoint.”
Tigers KO
Pups,
now look to
playoffs
By CHRIS EASTERLING
The Independent
MASSILLON, OH —
Like a boxer, the Massillon Tigers have been
knocked to the mat more than their share of times over the last 10 weeks.
They have taken body blows, and haymakers; uppercuts and jabs. They have stood
on legs of jelly and have looked out of eyes swollen and bruised.
Yet, they managed to get back up on their
feet. Their most faithful fans never counted them out. And on Saturday
afternoon, the referee lifted the Tigers’ hand in victory.
Despite all of the punches the Tigers have
taken, all the stumbles to the mat, they have emerged on top. It may not be the
mountaintop, but they can at least see it from where they stand now.
For the Tigers find themselves with a chance
to play for the championship, a chance to put together five more weeks of
inspired football. Seven days ago, that chance was on life support; on
Saturday, after delivering a 17-0 knockout punch to archrival McKinley, that
chance is beating strong as ever.
A team that couldn’t seem to shake .500 for
most of the season has done just that, and finds itself in the playoffs.
“We just bounce back every week, win or
lose,” senior safety Cooper Ivan said. “It’s Massillon-McKinley and it’s always
going to be a good game. I love playing football with these guys.”
The memories of questionable officials’ calls and disheartening losses are just
that now – memories. They now serve as a foundation from which the Tigers can
build to be a stronger football team as they prepare to take that next step,
which is the playoffs.
“You have to handle adversity when you play
football,” junior linebacker Spencer Leno said as his teammates celebrated with
family and fans after the game Saturday. “It’s all about how you handle it and
how you bounce back.”
The Tigers handled it by not falling apart,
not pointing fingers or fracturing the locker room. They pulled even closer
together.
The team that found itself in a literal fight
at a camp at end of the summer showed the figurative fight of a champion at the
end of the season.
“We have that team now,” senior outside
linebacker Brian Arelt said. “We’ve been missing that the past couple of years.
We just have that close bond where we’re one big happy family most of the
time.”
Even within Saturday’s game, the Tigers
didn’t let the events on the field tear them apart. When the defense found
itself on a number of occasions having to go right back out onto the field
after one of the four Massillon turnovers, there was no complaining or criticizing.
Instead, the defense just took its intensity
up another level, ratcheting it up another octane, as each minute ticked off
the clock. By the end of the game, that defense had beaten McKinley into a
state of confusion.
Yet, there was no confusion on the Tiger
sideline. Only celebrating and congratulating among teammates, among a band of
brothers who were reaping the rewards of months of work, months of blood and
sweat and tears.
“Our team is close together,” said J.T.
Turner, who rushed for 208 yards on Saturday, while adding a fumble recovery
and at least seven big hits on defense. “We’ve been with each other since
December, so we’ve just been rolling together. We proved it today.”
And like the triumphant boxer, the Tigers
stood at the end of the day with their arms raised to the sky, pointing the way
to the top. Now, they get to take the next step in the journey to get there.