Youth Football Camp
FREE Youth camp open to students first through eighth grade
Date: Saturday, May 20
Registration: 8:15 a.m. – Camp: 9 – 11 a.m.
Location: Paul David Indoor Facility
MassillonTigers.com – Updated 2017
The Massillon Tiger Football Booster Club is proud to unveil the new and updated MassillonTigers.com. We are working very hard to provide a website that is reflective of our support for the Massillon Tiger Football Program. This website is essentially a living document and is expected to be updated at minimum weekly, but most likely daily. While the website is now live, it is not yet in it’s full release form. We are working daily to upload the many, many game stories, photographs, videos, etc. that we have at our disposal in hopes that the site will meet the desires and expectations of the users. We encourage you to browse the site as we build it and hope you will take the time to offer your insight into how we can continue to make your experience better.
Some key features you will notice which will enhance your experience within our media guide are:
- Search function. – located at the right of the page directly under Obie is a search box. Type in key words of what you are looking for and click the magnifying glass or Enter. The search will be able to scour the entire site to return results of your key words. This will aid in finding information quickly rather than pouring through many documents. Our goal is to make every document on this site searchable so you can find what you are looking for.
- Daily Booster Club happenings. Follow the front page of MassillonTigers.com for updates on booster club events, Massillon Tiger Football events, historical stories, etc.
- Integrated video. We will soon be linking video to game stories along with photos and anything else we find pertinent to each story. What is integrated video? see Below
We continue to work daily to update this site in hopes of having everything updated by August 1st. We welcome you commentary.
2016: Massillon 21, Dublin Scioto 31
OUT OF REACH
Tigers’ mistakes, lack of consistency spell early exit from playoffs vs. Scioto
By Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON One step forward, two steps back. Where that left Massillon by the end of Friday night was on the wrong end of the scoreboard and looking at an early playoff exit. The Tigers couldn’t maintain a consistent offense, and couldn’t consistently slow down Dublin Scioto in a season-ending 31-21 loss in a Division II Region 7 quarterfinal at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
“We would something good and make a good play – and this was both sides of the ball – and then we would turn the ball over or make an uncharacteristic mistake,” said Jon Mazur, who was serving as Massillon’s acting head coach as Nate Moore served a playoff suspension.
“We’d have a missed block or a missed tackle or a guy jumping offsides. We just did a lot of things, and when you’re playing this level of football in the playoffs, everybody’s good and you can’t beat good teams making those mistakes.”
As Moore watched from the east press box, his team struggled to maintain many of the things which had epitomized its success during a seven-game win streak to end the regular season. Instead of advancing to a regional-semifinal matchup with New Albany, the Tigers bow out at 8-3.
The Massillon run game, which was the bread-and-butter of the offense, had forgettable bookends to the season. The Tigers ran for just 142 yards on 40 total carries, the lowest total since only gaining 90 yards in the season-opening loss to Mentor.
“Our defense, I don’t know what to call it, but it’s been a very strong unit all year,” Scioto coach Karl Johnson said after his team improved to 8-3. “We’ve been very good against the run most of the year. We needed to put the offense with it, and we were able to do that.”
The centerpiece of that offense was a running game that gashed Massillon for big yards when it needed it most. The Irish ran for 253 yards on 39 attempts, the most rushing yards gained against the Tigers since Warren Harding ran for 359 yards in what was their last loss of the season.
Scioto finished with 400 yards of offense, while only turning the ball over once. The Irish, meanwhile, turned three Massillon turnovers into a touchdown and a field goal.
“The game, any game, is going to come down to explosive plays, third-down conversions and turnover margins,” Johnson said. “We probably won all of those tonight”.
That’s why we were able to win this game. Scioto didn’t lead at any point until one of those explosive plays – a 65-yard Jared Nolan run gave it a 21-14 lead 36 seconds into the second quarter. The Irish took the lead for good on a 25-yard Noah Densel pass to Weston Talentino with 11:04 remaining to make it 28-21.
Massillon’s offense came down to the passing game primarily. The Tigers scored on their first play – a school-record 89-yard Austin Jasinski catch-and-run from Seth Blankenship – for a 7-0 lead.
The Tigers also took a 14-7 lead on a Blankenship-to-Austin Kutscher 14-yard pass with 2:43 left in the first quarter. They would tie the game at 21-21 when Jasinski caught his second touchdown of the game, a 55-yarder with 8:58 remaining. Blankenship finished 7-of-15 for 203 yards with the three touchdowns and one interception. Jasinski had four of those catches and 168 of the yards.
Massillon wouldn’t score again. The Tigers had a pair of field goals blocked: a 25-yarder in the third quarter which would have given them the lead, and a 21-yarder in the fourth which would have pulled them within seven with 4:41 left.
“They did a good job of stopping the run or slowing the run down,” said Mazur, who also saw the Tigers flagged a season-high 14 times for 120 yards. “We were able to lean on the pass early and hit some big plays. In the second half, when we moved the ball and moved it down the field, we got stopped. We weren’t able to come up with the big play, whether it was in the pass or the run. We didn’t make the big play when we needed to in the second half.”
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 21, Canton McKinley 19
Tigers battle adversity, bring back victory bell
Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON Nothing seemed too easy for Massillon on Saturday afternoon.
The yards – and the points – didn’t quite come as effortlessly as they had in other games. McKinley, conversely, moved the ball as well as any Tiger opponent had moved it on them in weeks. Nothing, though, is supposed to be easy about a game between archrivals Massillon and McKinley. That’s why the wins are celebrated as heartily as they are, as was the case after the Tigers’ 21-19 win over the Bulldogs in front of roughly 14,000 at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
“That’s a Massillon-McKinley game,” Tiger defensive lineman Malcolm Robinson said. “The thing that won this game for us was that we pulled for each other until the last minute and the last seconds of the last quarter. That’s what this Massillon Tiger football team does. When you do that, you win football games.”
Massillon will now take an 8-2 record into the Division II playoffs, which will start next Friday night at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium. The Tigers, who will be the No. 2 seed, will face No. 7 seed Dublin Scioto, although the official pairings won’t be set until Sunday.
The record will show the winning points for Massillon came on a 10-yard run by Keyshawn Watson – who was making his season debut – with 10:05 remaining. That gave the Tigers a 21-13 advantage. It will also show McKinley had multiple chances to make things even more difficult on Massillon than it already was. The Bulldogs pulled within 21-19 on a 4-yard Dominique Robinson run less than a minute after Watson’s run.
Having already had a point-after kick blocked, McKinley went for the 2-point conversion to try and tie the game. That attempt was fumbled, keeping the Tigers in front by two.
“We were chasing that point from early in the game,” McKinley coach Dan Reardon said after his team fell to 6-4 heading into the Division I Region 1 playoffs. “We had to go for two, and we didn’t get it. When you get behind by a PAT or whatever, you’re always chasing it. That was the difference.”
Likewise, McKinley’s subsequent – and final – drive offered a chance to not just tie, but take the lead. However, a 37-yard field goal try with 4:32 left was pushed right, keeping Massillon ahead.
“It’s all about the brotherhood,” Tiger senior linebacker Jacob Risher said. “We all do it for the guy next to us. We all wanted it as bad as the other, and we pulled through.”
McKinley, despite an afternoon in which it gained 339 offensive yards, never saw a chance to change the score after that. That’s because Massillon milked the rest of the clock by running it nine straight times to end the game. That running game was boosted by the return of Watson, who had missed the first nine games due to
being academically ineligible. The junior, who rushed for 1,000 yards a year ago, gained 167 yards on 31 attempts and scored the Tigers’ final touchdown.
Watson’s effort helped Massillon run for 261 yards on 54 carries as a team. It was Watson’s 35-yard run – with an additional 15 tacked on for a McKinley personal foul – which moved Massillon from secondand-7 at its own 5 to first-and-10 at the Bulldog 45.
That drive, which included a 9-yard Jamir Thomas run on fourth-and-1, culminated in Watson’s scoring run.
“We knew Keyshawn was a good football player,” said Tiger quarterback Seth Blankenship, whose only two completions on the day were a pair of touchdown passes to Austin Jasinski. “We knew he had to change to get back out there. Once he fixed that up, it’s was just Keyshawn being Keyshawn. He didn’t lose any form, because we made him work himself back into it.”
McKinley, which had come into the game having scored just one offensive touchdown in its previous two games, scored one in each of the first two quarters to take a 13-7 halftime lead. The Bulldogs picked up a 79-yard Robinson-to-Prayer Wise touchdown in the first quarter to pull within 7-6, then a 12-yard Robinson run with 9:33 left in the half to take the lead.
The Bulldogs threw virtually everything at Massillon, from Reggie Corner getting his first four rushing attempts of the season – for 62 yards – to a formation where backup quarterback Alijah Curtis lined up by himself behind center, with everyone else lined up in a swinging-gate-like look.
That’s how seven of McKinley’s 11 possessions were able to reach Massillon territory. However, an interception and a fumble lost ended two drives, while the Bulldogs also failed to convert on fourth and-1 at the Tiger 22.
“It was nuts,” Risher said. “All the formations they ran, it was not on film. We watch a ton and a ton and a ton of film. We had to read our keys, learn on the go and we got the job done.”
That’s why, despite all the adversity, the Tigers were ringing the Victory Bell in joy when the game came to an end.
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 21, Akron St. Vincent St. Mary 12
TIGERS GROUND
AND POUND
Tigers overcome weather, first half turnovers to rally past SVSM
Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON The weather outside was frightful. Almost as frightful as Massillon’s first-half turnovers. It would, however, all turn out delightful for the Tigers.
Shaking off the rain and four first-half turnovers, Massillon would ground and pound its way to a second-half rally to beat St. Vincent-St. Mary 21-12 on Friday night at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
“The weather was definitely a factor,” said Massillon coach Nate Moore after his team won its sixth in a row to improve to 7-2 heading into the regular-season finale against archrival McKinley. “We had some uncharacteristic turnovers. We just fought through it and came together as a team and got it done.”
After running for just 57 yards on 18 first-half carries, Massillon would run the football for 16 consecutive plays – gaining 65 yards in the process – to open the third quarter.
The final three yards came on a Jamir Thomas keeper out of the wildcat formation, giving the Tigers a 7-6 lead with 4:18 left in the third. That would just be the start of it in the second half. Massillon ran for 170 yards on 41 second half carries, with Thomas adding a 2-yard run with 3:28 remaining to add a cushion by making
it 21-12.
“They have a great (offensive) line; we knew that going in,” said Irish coach Marcus Wattley, whose team fell to 5-4 and saw its three-game win streak snapped. “We did a good job using our speed to neutralize that in the first half. The second half, not so much. Once their big boys get on you, they’re hard to get off.”
Jefferson carries the load While Thomas was the one to cash two of the three second-half scoring drives in for Massillon, it was Ethen Jefferson who helped get it down in position to score. After carrying the ball just once for eight yards in the first half, Jefferson ran for 119 yards on 25 second-half carries.
That helped Jefferson finish with 127 yards on 26 carries. Over the last two weeks, the senior has run for 263 yards on 44 carries.
“He was a workhorse for us tonight,” Moore said of Jefferson. “He ran really hard. He got some tough yards. You have to give credit to St. Vincent-St. Mary; really good football team with a great defense. It was some tough sledding in there.”
Massillon would go in front 14-6 on the only real big play it picked up all night. Seth Blankenship shook off a two-interception first half to hit Austin Jasinski for a 58-yard touchdown with 2:05 remaining in the third. Blankenship would finish 2-of-7 for 61 yards on the night. “It was big for our team,” Moore said. “Those guys executed out here in the rain. It was a great throw and a great catch.”
St. Vincent-St. Mary would match that big throw-and-catch with one of their own to make things interesting early in the fourth quarter. Freshman Luke Lindsay hit Malik Wooldridge for a 47-yard touchdown pass with 9:28 remaining. Failed-two-point conversion After Massillon was called for pass interference on the initial two-point conversion try, the Irish were stuffed on a rushing attempt on the subsequent try. That kept the Tigers in front 14-12.
“He’s not your average freshman,” Wattley said of Lindsay, who accounted for 151 of the Irish’s 159 total yards with his arm. “We knew that. That’s why we trusted him in a game like this.”
Halfway through the game, the Tigers seemed to be fighting the same luck they had battled through the last three years against the Irish. They gave the ball up three times on their first four possessions, then fumbled away a lateral attempt after getting an interception on the final play of the first half.
Despite all of that, however, Massillon was still only a play away from getting the lead. All St. Vincent-St. Mary could muster from all of those Tiger turnovers was a pair of Jamie Martucci field goals, which gave the Irish a 6-0 halftime lead. That’s why, despite only 60 total first-half yards and the minus-3 turnover margin, there wasn’t a lot of hand-wringing in the locker room at halftime for Massillon.
“The coaches went in and got to work making adjustments,” Moore said. “We decided what we wanted to go to in the second half. The kids digested the information and applied it on the field.”
Which is why a frightful start ended with a delightful finish for the Tigers.
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 45, Akron Firestone 14
TIGER5
Massillon makes it five straight with win over Falcons
Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON Nate Moore cautioned anyone who would listen that Firestone wasn’t Bowsher.
He told everyone that a ridiculously-overmatched opponent wasn’t what was coming in to Paul Brown Tiger Stadium on Friday night.
The Falcons lived up to the Massillon coach’s advance warnings. Yet, the threat put up by Firestone wasn’t enough to derail the Tigers, who were able to pull away for a 45-14 win.
“You have to compliment their team and their coaching staff,” said Moore, whose team has won five in a row to improve to 6-2. “I thought they did a great job tonight and they had their kids prepared to play. We made some mistakes in the first half; we just have to play a little better.”
The Tigers, who saw a 17-7 halftime lead cut to 17-14 two plays into the second half, scored the game’s final 28 points to pull away.
Massillon will try to ride that momentum into next Friday’s home game against St. Vincent-St. Mary, which has won three in a row over the Tigers, all at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
Friday marked the first game in a Massillon uniform for highly-touted lineman Thayer Munford, who had to sit out the first seven games after transferring from Cincinnati La Salle in the spring. Munford’s debut, though, didn’t come on offense, but on defense as he started at defensive tackle.
“I have to take a look at the film, but it seemed from the sideline that he blocked well,” Moore said of Munford, who changed numbers from No. 64 to No. 73 in the second half. “He seemed effective at defensive tackle. It looked like he played good, but we’ll have to grade the film and see.”
After Munford and the rest of the Tiger defense stopped Firestone on its initial drive, the Massillon offense – with Munford at left tackle – proceeded to take the lead for good on its first drive. Methodically marching 80 yards in 10 play, Louis Partridge gave the Tigers a 7-0 lead on a 5-yard run on fourth-and-1 with 6:03 remaining in the first quarter.
That was one of three touchdowns on the night for Partridge, who continues to get better each week for Massillon. A week after rushing for what was a career-high 137 yards in a win over Beechcroft, the sophomore topped that with 143 yards on 24 carries against Firestone.
Partridge had 123 yards on 18 first-half carries. His 17th carry – a 6-yard run – gave the Tigers a 17-0 lead with 5:12 remaining in the half.
“He’s getting better,” Moore said of Partridge. “I saw him hit a nice A-gap seam down there. He’s getting better, which is what we ask all the kids to do.”
In between Partridge’s two first-half scores, Nate Gregg added his seventh field goal of the season, a career-long-tying 32-yarder. That gave Massillon a 10-0 lead.
While Partridge continued his growth, Ethen Jefferson found his first extensive carries to his benefit. Jefferson rushed for 136 yards on 18 and scored two key second-half scores that helped provide the Tigers with the necessary cushion.
“I thought Ethen ran really well,” said Moore, whose team gained 501 total yards, 280 on the ground. “I’m really proud of him. He’s just a tough kid; lunch-pail guy who comes to practice every day and practices his tail off.”
Firestone put together three drives in the first half alone that reached Tiger territory, including a 14-play drive that pulled it within 17-7 at the half. Jordon Jones hit Justin Moore on a 3-yard scoring pass with 20 seconds left in the half.
It became 17-14 just 39 seconds into the second half. Massillon fumbled the kickoff and Firestone fell on it at the Tiger 14.
Two plays after that fumble – the second of the game for the Tigers after four consecutive turnover-less games – Joshua Mitchell scored from a yard out for Firestone. The Falcons finished with 248 total yards, 222 of those through the air.
That, though, would be answered by a Massillon scoring drive. Jefferson’s 6-yard run closed that seven-play, 64-yard drive out to make it 24-14 with 8:30 left in the third.
“It was really important,” Moore said of the quick response. “We had to do that and respond on offense and answer with a touchdown. It was good that we did that.”
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 41, Columbus Beechcroft 19
TIGERS AIR IT OUT
Blankenship throws 5 Tds to beat Beechcroft
By Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON
Massillon has been a run-first football team this season. That doesn’t mean the Tigers haven’t enjoyed airing it out as well.
On Friday night, Massillon took to the air to take the air out of Beechcroft’s hopes for an undefeated season. The Tigers rode five Seth Blankenship touchdown passes to a 41-19 win over the Cougars at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
Blankenship completed 13-of-17 passes for 258 yards on the night. The five touchdowns represent a career high for the senior quarterback.
“He’s our field general,” Massillon coach Nate Moore said after his team won its fourth in a row to improve to 5-2. “He’s really grown as a quarterback and a leader of our football team over the course of the season. The kids believe in him; our coaching staff believes in him. He led our team to victory tonight.”
Blankenship hit Austin Jasinski for a first-quarter touchdown strike of 68 yards and a second-quarter scoring pass of 47 yards. The latter gave Massillon the lead for good at 14-12 with 7:48 remaining in the half.
Jasinski finished with just the two catches for 115 yards.
With that Austin having made an impact, Blankenship elected to give another Austin – Kutscher – a chance to shine. He would connect with the junior to close out the last two second-quarter possessions on scoring passes of 31 and 45.
The latter provided Massillon with a 28-12 lead with 13 seconds remaining in the first half.
Kutscher finished with a game-high six catches for 107 yards.
“Austin Kutscher took advantage of some man-to-man situations, press situations,” Moore said. “He showed what he could do for us. We were getting nine guys in the box, so that had to happen.”
Kutscher wasn’t the only Tiger to have a big night when maybe it wasn’t expected. Sophomore running back Louis Partridge, getting a bulk of the carries due to Jamir Thomas sitting out the game due to injury, rushed for a career-high 137 yards on 27 carries.
Partridge didn’t find the end zone. But he did continue to show the growth he has undergone over the four-game win streak.
“He’s still got a lot to learn, but he runs hard,” Moore said of Partridge. “He runs hard and he picked up a lot of key yards for us.”
What made those first-half touchdowns even more clutch for the Tigers – and crippling for the Cougars – was the timing. The first three scores all came in third-and-long situations.
The initial scoring pass to Jasinski, which gave Massillon a 7-6 lead, came on third-and-7. The second Jasinski touchdown catch was on third-and-15 play, two snaps after a chop block moved the Tigers out of Beechcroft territory.
The third Tiger touchdown – the 31-yard pass to Kutscher – came on third-and-17. Just the play before, Massillon lost seven yards on a sack.
The Tigers were 6-of-8 on third-down conversions in the first half. They finished the game 8-of-14 on third down.
The final third-down conversion for Massillon was Blankenship’s final touchdown toss, a 2-yarder to Edwin Glick for a 41-19 lead with 5:29 remaining.
“They were putting nine guys in the box and we were still trying to pound the rock up in there,” Moore said. “We were beating our heads against the wall a little bit and we had to make some adjustments, maybe not really adjustments but execution. We had to force the ball down the field to get them out of it.”
Beechcroft, meanwhile, had its own third-down successes early on. The Cougars’ opening-drive score was set up by a 43-yard catch-and-run by Datrey Long to the Tiger 16.
Two plays later, quarterback Kyle Barrett scored on a 1-yard run for a 6-0 Beechcroft lead 3:03 into the game.
Beechcroft took a 12-7 lead with 8:37 remaining in the first half on a third-down touchdown pass from Barrett to Tre Parks of 22 yards. The Cougars missed the two-point try.
Barrett would throw one more touchdown pass, a 53-yarder to Long with 5:13 remaining in the third to make it 31-19 Tigers. Barrett finished 15-of-26 for 263 yards passing, with Long catching six of those for 139 yards.
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 38, Austintown Fitch 21
Tigers ditches Fitch
Strong second half helps Massillon snap three game skid vs. Falcons
By Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON The power of three.
Massillon came into Friday night’s home game against Austintown Fitch looking for their first three-game win streak since the first half of the 2014 season. To achieve that feat, however, the Tigers were going to have to take care of another three-game win streak.
The Falcons’ three-game win streak over Massillon.
Nobody said accomplishing that feat would be easy. But the Tigers were able to do it, scoring the game’s final 21 points to rally for a 38-21 win over Fitch.
“We have great kids who play hard,” Massillon coach Nate Moore said. “That’s really the bottom line there. They played hard tonight for 48 minutes and came out with a win against a good team.”
The Tigers are now 4-2 on the season. Massillon will look for its first four-game win streak since starting the 2014 season 5-0 next Friday night when it plays host to undefeated Columbus Beechcroft.
If there was one major concern to emerge from the game, it was the health of two key players: Jamir Thomas and Malcolm Robinson. Thomas suffered a leg injury late in the first quarter and didn’t return, while Robinson appeared to injure his ankle with less than two minutes left.
Moore didn’t know the extent of their injuries beyond Friday night.
In Thomas’ place stepped Kordell Ford and Louis Partridge, both of whom were huge in the second-half rally after Fitch went ahead 21-17 with 8:47 remaining in the third quarter. Partridge’s 2-yard run with :28 left in the third gave Massillon the lead for good at 24-21.
That run was set up when Jesse King recovered a Fitch fumble at the Tiger 32. It was one of two Falcon turnovers.
Ford then scored on fourth-quarter runs of 44 and 5 to help provide a cushion for the Tigers. He would finish with a team-high 88 yards on 14 carries.
Partridge had 77 yards on 18 totes. The Tigers rushed for 285 yards as a team on 51 attempts.
Massillon’s first drive was virtually a thing of perfection, giving it a 7-0 lead. The Tigers used 13 plays to go 68 yards, capping the drive with a 1-yard Thomas touchdown run with 6:54 left in the quarter.
The Tigers had a 77-yard fake-punt touchdown by Austin Jasinski negated by a personal foul flag on their next drive. They would still get to the Fitch 2, but lost a net of 13 yard on the next three plays to settle for a 32-yard Nate Gregg field goal for a 10-0 lead with :32 left in the first quarter.
The change of quarters seemed to change both team’s fortunes. Fitch would get a pair of stops while adding two Randy Smith 2-yard touchdown runs for a 14-10 lead with 3:58 left in the half.
The Falcons, who had minus-3 net offensive yards in the first quarter, had 146 second quarter yards on 15 plays. That includes 6-of-8 passing by Nate Fowler in the quarter for an even 100 yards.
Fitch finished with 284 yards. One thing the Falcons did well for the first three quarters was catch Massillon adjusting defensively by breaking the huddle with less than :15 on the play clock and sprinting to the line and snapping the ball.
Once the Tigers started to neutralize that over the last quarter or so, they were able to slow down the Falcon momentum.
“We just kind of simplified everything,” Moore said. “We were having a little trouble with as fast as they were going from huddle to the line of scrimmage to the snap. We basically just simplified some things.”
It would be a Fitch mistake that would help give the Tigers a 17-14 halftime lead. A roughing the passer flag against the Falcons on a third-and-9 incomplete pass put the Tigers on the Fitch 41.
Five Partridge runs – the last a 5-yarder – would put Massillon into the end zone with :51 left in the half. Partridge, who came on with 7:47 left in the second quarter after Thomas left with the injury, rushed for 64 yards on 10 first-half carries.
Fitch took the lead at 21-17 when it marched 55 yards in eight plays on the first possession of the second half. Smith’s third touchdown run, a 5-yarder, provided the margin.
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 75, Toledo Bowsher 7
TIGER DEMOLITION
Score 54 in first half en route to rout
Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
MASSILLON Massillon’s first play Friday night went for a touchdown. By the time the Tigers ran a second play, the rout of visiting Bowsher was well underway.
Offense, defense, special teams, it didn’t matter against the winless and overmatched Rebels.
Massillon scored in all three phases – in the first quarter alone – in rolling to a 75-7 blowout at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
“We came out and did what we’re supposed to do,” said Massillon coach Nate Moore, whose team will take a 3-2 record into next week’s home game against Austintown Fitch. “Proud of our kids for doing that. It’s on to next week and looking at Fitch.”
It was the most points scored in a game by Massillon since a 2014 77-13 win over St. John’s Collegiate out of Canada. It’s the most scored against a team from the United States since a 76-6 win over Fremont Ross in 2002.
After stopping Bowsher on the game’s opening drive, Massillon needed just one play – a 74-yard Seth Blankenship-to-Austin Jasinski pass – to take a 7-0 lead. That score would come with 8:59 left in the first quarter.
Just over four minutes later, the Tigers would run their second offensive play. In between those two plays, Kordell Ford would bring an interception back 75 yards for a score and Jasinski would bring a punt back 80 yards for a touchdown to make it 20-0 Massillon.
Such was the kind of night it was for the Tigers, who rolled up a 54-7 halftime lead. Massillon would score every time it touched the ball in that span, a total of six first-half possessions.
The Tigers had 299 total yards on just 23 first-half plays. They would finish with 424 yards on 45 plays.
The rout was so lopsided by that point that not only was a running clock in effect for the second half, but the quarters were reduced to just 10 minutes each.
By that point, however, the night had been long over for most of Massillon’s starters. But what a night it was, especially in the passing game.
Blankenship threw the ball just four times in just over a quarter of work. All four passes were completed for touchdowns totaling 156 yards.
“He’s doing a nice job,” Moore said of Blankenship, who had thrown for 386 yards and eight touchdowns in the last two weeks combined.
Aidan Longwell, the only other Tiger quarterback to throw the ball, was 2-for-2 for 36 yards.
That included a 5-yard touchdown to Jared Slutz.
Three of those passes went to Jasinski, who accumulated 140 yards on those catches. That gives him nine catches for 286 yards and five scores over the last two weeks.
“He’s really fast and he catches the football,” Moore said of Jasinski. “He’s a good player.”
The other touchdown pass was a 16-yard pass to Ethen Jefferson in the first quarter. That came on Massillon’s third offensive play to make it 27-0 after the point-after kick.
Louis Partridge handled a bulk of the rushing with the Tiger first unit. He carried it 16 times for 92 yards and scored his first two varsity touchdowns.
Defensively, meanwhile, Massillon picked back up where it left off in last week’s shutout of Ursuline. The Tigers limited Bowsher to minus-6 rushing yards on 16 first-half carries while forcing four turnovers, two of which were interceptions by Ford.
Bowsher finished with 109 total yards, 106 of those coming in the first half. The Rebels turned the ball over six times.
Of the Rebels’ 112 passing yards, 60 went to talented receiver and University of Toledo recruit Bryce Mitchell on four catches. Mitchell also provided Bowsher’s lone first-half score with an 87-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
That score, though, simply made it a 34-7 Massillon lead 1:50 into second quarter. Less than a minute later, though, Jasinski’s second scoring catch pushed the margin to 40-7 with still 9:23 left until the band show.
GAME STATS
2016: Massillon 30, Youngstown Ursuline 0
Massillon moves on
All-around winning performance propels Tigers past Ursuline in Warren
Chris Easterling
Independent sports editor
WARREN – Massillon football teams have made plenty of bus trips home from Warren over the years. Some have been enjoyable; others, not so much. Saturday, the Tigers made yet another of those bus rides home from Mollenkopf Stadium.
Massillon coach Nate Moore didn’t even need to get on the bus to know into which category it would fall.
“It’ll be a great bus ride home,” Moore said after his team defeated Ursuline 30-0 Saturday in Warren.
For the Tigers, the trip away from Warren was both literal and figurative. It was literal in the sense that they were leaving the locale and going home.
It was figurative in the sense that, after a week of hearing about their performance in a Week 3 loss to Warren Harding, Massillon was ready to move on and take care of the next challenge on the schedule.
That, as much as anything else, was what made the performance so satisfying to so many wearing the white helmets with Obie logo on the side.
“The kids came out and played well,” Moore said. “At times, really. … Offense, defense, special teams played a good game today.”
That performance has Massillon in position to close out the first half of the regular season right where it wants to be, with a winning record. The Tigers evened their mark at 2-2 with the win, and now return home for the first of six consecutive home games this Friday night against Bowsher. The Rebels will come to Paul Brown Tiger Stadium a far, far cry from the kind of team Massillon has faced over its first four games. They are 0-4 and have lost their last three games by an average of almost 37 points a game.
The Tigers insist they aren’t overlooking a team they beat by 30 a year ago. However, they also know this is a chance to build off what they did Saturday against Ursuline.
“We needed to win this week (at Ursuline),” Moore said. “We need to win next week, just like we need to win every week. The coaches will spend just as much time game-planning Bowsher; we’ll spend just as much time on the practice field trying to get better.”
Massillon’s coaches had insisted that they had improved over the course of the first three games going into the Ursuline game, despite losing two of its first three games. Saturday’s win provided the on-the-scoreboard evidence to back up those claims to the Doubting Thomases around.
Nowhere was that proof more evident than defensively, when the Tigers took steps to quiet some of the critics who claimed they couldn’t stop the run. Ursuline came in as a team that thrives on running the football.
On Saturday, Massillon’s defense silenced that Irish running game. The Tigers limited Ursuline to just 69 yards on 28 attempts, an average of 2.5 yards per carry. Even better for Massillon was the fact that it gave up none of the big rushing plays which had plagued it in losses to Mentor and Warren. The longest Irish run was nine yards. Ursuline, which did have three first-half drives inside Tiger territory, managed just 143 total yards.
Of those 61 came on the Irish’s final first-half drive, which ended at the Tiger 2 when Massillon came up with one of three its fourth-down stops.
“I think defensive line-wise we did a good job,” Moore said. “We’re playing through some injuries at linebacker. We had some guys step up big-time today and play well in spots where they hadn’t played before. A good overall team effort.”
It wasn’t just the defense, either. The offense returned to a balance that it didn’t necessarily have over the first three games, while also not turning the ball over for the first time since a loss to Ursuline in Week 7 of the 2014 season. Massillon continued to run the football well, gaining 166 yards on 43 carries. Jamir Thomas once again led the way with 75 yards on 14 carries, which was significantly down from the 30-plus attempts he had posted in the previous two games.
However, along with that running game, the Tigers showed they’re more than capable of beating a team through the air as well. Seth Blankenship completed 15-of-23 passes for 230 yards and four touchdowns. Blankenship’s 66-yard second-quarter strike to Austin Jasinski staked Massillon to a 7-0 halftime lead.
His 20-yard touchdown pass to Jasinski two plays into the fourth quarter closed out the scoring. In between, the senior threw two third-quarter scoring strikes that helped the Tigers turn a close game into a rout. He had a 37-yard pass to Marcus Perrin and a 12-yarder to Austin Kuscher.
“It wasn’t anything different,” Moore said of Blankenship’s performance. “It’s just (quarterbacks coach Brett) Cooper getting back to the drawing board, working on fundamentals. Seth just believed in the play calls. Coach Cooper just did a great job mixing up the run and the pass. I thought we were pretty balanced.”
The all-around team performance also had help from the special teams. That didn’t just include Nate Gregg’s 27-yard field goal which gave Massillon a 10-0 third-quarter lead. The Tigers’ 23-point second half was almost exclusively set up by special-teams plays.
They recovered a fumbled pooch kick at the Irish 37, which set up Perrin’s touchdown catch to make it 16-0. An onside kick recovery after that score set up Jasinski’s second touchdown catch. There was a little longer wait between recovery and score there due to a 30-minute lightning delay.
“We really got some momentum there with those two fumble recoveries on special teams,” Moore said. “(Special teams coordinator Jason) Jarvis does a great job and we put the ball in some spots where we had a chance to recover if they weren’t handled correctly. They weren’t and our kids were opportunistic and jumped on it and got those balls recovered. That carried us with some momentum.”
Momentum which carried over to a happy bus ride home from Warren.