Tag: <span>2009 OHSAA Playoffs</span>

History

2009: Massillon 17, Cleveland Glenville 31

Tigers’ run ends in 31-17 loss to Glenville

By CHRIS EASTERLING
The Independent

AKRON, OH — The one thing the Massillon Tigers didn’t want Saturday night’s Division I state semifinal against Glenville to turn into was a track meet. But the Tarblooders were able to do just that, hitting on three touchdowns of at least 40 yards as they defeated the Tigers 31-17 in front of 10,248 at the University of Akron’s InfoCision Stadium.

The loss ends Massillon’s season a game shy of the state championship game, as the Tigers bow out at 10-4. Glenville, which is 13-1, will make its first-ever title-game appearance next Saturday night at Fawcett Stadium, facing Hilliard Davidson (12-1).

The catalyst for the Tigers’ loss was their inability to keep Glenville’s explosive athletes in check. The Tarblooders hit on touchdowns of 51, 44, 71 and 26 yards, the last two of those coming in the fourth quarter after Massillon had battled back from an 11-point deficit to tie the game at 17-17.

“It just wasn’t our night tonight,” said Tiger coach Jason Hall, whose team was outgained 466-270 on the night. “They made more big plays than us. They executed. … They’re a good team.”

The Tigers did their best for much of the night to keep Glenville contained. The Tarblooders managed just two first downs over the first 15 minutes of the game, while Massillon chewed up yards and clock time in jumping in front 3-0 on Jeremy Geier’s 30-yard field goal with 9:07 left in the first half.

But on the very first play of its next possession, Glenville showed why they’re generallyregarded as one of the most athletic teams in the state. Running back Toney Foster Jr. took a pitch to the left and raced down the sideline – avoiding a  would-be Massillon tacklers at about the Tiger 15 – for a 51- yard touchdown with 8:46 left in the half.

It would grow to 14-3 Glenville on the Tarblooders’ next possession. This time, it was Cardale Jones hitting Aramis Greenwood Jr. on a 45-yard catch-and-run on a post pattern.

Jones tossed a jump pass to Shane Belle II for the two-point conversion for the 11-point margin with 2:26 showing on the clock.

“We just felt we needed to attack the middle,” said Jones, who threw for 199 yards and two scores while rushing for another 150 yards and a score. “We felt they were weak in the middle, and our game plan, everything was based on attacking that middle.

Their linebackers were running out to the flats, leaving the middle wide open.”

But the Tigers didn’t wilt in the face of their largest deficit of the postseason. Instead, they began to claw back.
Massillon pulled within 14-10 on Bo Grunder’s 26-yard touchdown catch with 1:28 left in the half. The one-play scoring drive was set up by a muffed punt which was recovered by the Tigers’ Danny Huhn.

Grunder finished the game with four catches for 63 yards, all of those in the second quarter.

“I just try to do the best I can for my teammates,” Grunder said. “I try to make a play when I can; catch a ball when it’s thrown to me. I do my part.”

Glenville would get a field goal before the half for a 17-10 lead, but the Tigers fought back to a 17-17 deadlock on Jake Reiman’s 2-yard run with 5:53 left in the third. Reiman’s run capped a 13-play, 74-yard scoring drive for Massillon, a drive boosted by a pair of penalties on Glenville, including an offsides flag on a fourth-and-4 situation from the Tarblooder 15.

Nine of the 13 plays on the drive were rushes by Massillon, which ran the ball 37 times for 104 yards. Reiman finished with 79 yards on 26 carries.

“I thought we had some success,” Hall said. “We just weren’t consistent tonight. That probably would be the biggest thing; we weren’t consistent when we got on the other side of the 50.”

Glenville got on the other side of the 50 on its first two fourth-quarter possessions, and that’s what won it the game.

The first time came when Jones hit Shane Wynn on a 71-yard touchdown pass with 8:59 remaining. Jones was scrambling to the left, drawing the Tiger defense toward him, before hitting a wide-open Wynn about 10 yards down-field.

Wynn then raced to the end zone for a 24-17 Tarblooder lead. “I dumped the ball off to Wynn,” Jones said. “It was about a 6- yard pass, and he did the rest.”

Jones did it himself on the next Tarblooder possession, scrambling 26 yards for a score with 5:02 left for a 31-17 lead.

Massillon would twice drive inside the Glenville 25. Both would end on failed fourth-down conversions.

GAME STATS

Glenville 31
Massillon 17

Massillon 00 10 07 00 17
Glenville 00 17 00 14 31

SCORING SUMMARY
M – FG Geier 30
G – Foster 51 run (Run failed)
G – Greenwood 44 pass from Jones (Belle pass from Jones)
M – Grunder 26 pass from Partridge (Geier kick)
G – FG Bryant 28
M – Reiman 2 run (Geier kick)
G – Wynn 71 pass from Jones (Bryant kick)
G – Jones 26 run (Bryant kick)
Mas Glen
First downs 16 18
Rushes-yards 37-104 36-267
Comp-Att-Int 11-29-0 9-20-0
Passing yards 166 199
Fumbles-lost 0-0 3-1
Penalty yards 4-21 9-79
Records 10-4 13-1
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing:
Massillon – Reiman 26-79 TD; Nalbach 4-37; White 2-4.
Glenville – Jones 16-150 TD; Foster 5-69 TD; Walton 7-28; Wynn
6-22.
Passing:
Massillon – Partridge 11-29-166 TD.
Glenville – Jones 9-20-199 2 TDs.
Receiving:
Massillon – Smith 5-78; Grunder 4 – 63; Olack 2-25;.
Glenville – Wynn 2-71 TD; Anderson 2-14; Greenwood 1-44 TD;
Davis 1-23; Dunn 1-19; Bell 1-18; Bryant 1-9.

History

2009: Massillon 10, Twinsburg 7

Geier’s kick lifts Massillon past Twinsburg

By CHRIS EASTERLING
The Independent

CANTON, OH – It was as good a time as any for Jeremy Geier to attempt – and hit – the longest field goal of his two-year Massillon Tiger career.

With the score tied and 28 seconds showing on the clock Saturday night, Geier connected on a 40-yard field goal to lift Massillon past Twinsburg 10-7 in a Division I regional semifinal in front of 7,621 fans at Fawcett Stadium.

“It couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Geier, whose previous career long – both for an attempted and a made field goal – was 39 yards. “That was awesome.”

The win sends Massillon, now 9-3, to the regional championship game for the first time since 2005. Standing in the Tigers’ path is archrival McKinley, which is 8-4 after routing GlenOak 48-7 earlier Saturday afternoon at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

The fifth playoff meeting between the two rivals will be held at the University of Akron’s new InfoCision Stadium. The previous four playoff meetings were all at the Rubber Bowl. It wasn’t nearly as easy for the Tigers to earn their rematch with the Bulldogs, who won the regular-season meeting 35-21 at Fawcett Stadium. In fact, Massillon found itself in a dogfight with another group of Tigers – these from Twinsburg – for almost 48 solid minutes.

“I can’t say enough about the character of this team and the way they handle adversity,” Massillon coach Jason Hall said. “They never give up. You think they’re down, and they just keep fighting. It’s a bunch of fighters. I’m just proud of these kids. I’m happy to be a small part of it.”

The only scoring prior to Geier’s field goal was a touchdown pass for each team. Twinsburg’s came on a 38-yard screen pass from Andrew Collier to Dion Johnson with 3:39 left in the first half for a 7-0 lead, while Massillon matched that with a 41-yard strike from Robert Partridge to Devin Smith with 8:46 remaining in the third quarter.
While both teams’ touchdowns came through the air, it was the running games for both which really set the tone. Twinsburg rushed for 216 yards, while Massillon gained 140 on the ground.

For Massillon, much of that rushing total came in the second half, when it made a concerted effort to utilize its size advantage up front with a variety of unbalanced looks to pound the ball against Twinsburg. The biggest benefactor was Jake Reiman, who had 19 of his game-high 26 carries and 78 of his game – and career – high 125 yards in the second half.

“I couldn’t have done it without my line or my fullback,” Reiman said. “They block their (butts) off today. … I’m just glad I got my opportunity and I’m trying to do the best I can with it.”

Both teams had plenty of chances to add to their totals. All eight of Massillon’s possessions in the game had at least two snaps on Twinsburg’s side of the 50, including a pair of drives – beyond the Tigers’ two scoring drives – which moved inside the Twinsburg 30.

But Massillon turned the ball over three times on Twinsburg’s side of the field, including a pair of interceptions, one of which came in the end zone.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Hall said. “It was not pretty. We made mistakes and I said it at halftime, we were killing ourselves. It wasn’t like they were smashing us at the line with a lot of negative plays. We killed ourselves.”

Twinsburg had its chances as well. The Summit County edition of the Tigers had seven of their nine possessions reach the Massillon side of the field, including three drives inside the Massillon 30.

Two of those drives were turned away by fourth-down stands by Massillon, and another was squelched when Bo Grunder got the first of his two interceptions on the night. Grunder also put the final nail in the Twinsburg coffin with a pick with 17 seconds left.

Twinsburg also had an 83-yard touchdown pass late in the first half negated by a holding penalty.

“This is the same problem we had last year against Hoover (in the second round of the playoffs),” said Twinsburg coach Mark Solis, whose team bows out in the second round for the second straight year, this time at 10-2. “I have to go back and work my (butt) off as a coach and figure it out. We have to do a better job when we get down in the red zone. What it is, when we get down there and people put pressure on us, we don’t handle it
well.”

GAME STATS

Massillon 10
Twinsburg 7

Massillon 00 00 07 03 10
Twinsburg 00 07 00 00 07

SCORING SUMMARY
T – Johnson 38 pass from Collier (Russell kick)
M – Smith 41 pass from Partridge (Geier kick)
M – FG Geier 40

Mas Twi
First downs 20 17
Rushes-yards 34-140 37-216
Comp-Att-Int 13-27-2 12-22-2
Passing yards 226 132
Fumbles-lost 1-1 1-0
Penalty yards 7-48 6-50
Records 9-3 10-2
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing:
Massillon – Reiman 26-125; Nalbach 3-14.
Twinsburg – Nero 7-95; Johnson 15-65; Collier 12-43; Hiller 3-
13.
Passing:
Massillon – Partridge 13-27-226 TD, 2 INTs.
Twinsburg – Collier 12-22-132 TD, 2 INTs.
Receiving:
Massillon – Olack 4-104; Smith 4-64 TD; Grunder 4-41; Allman 1-
17.
Twinsburg – Johnson 3-56 TD; Comar 3-30; Nero 3-24; Grant 2-16;
Francisco 1-6.

History

2009: Massillon 17, North Canton Hoover 10

Tigers moving on, sweep out Hoover

By CHRIS EASTERLING
The Independent

MASSILLON, OH — For almost 365 days, the Massillon Tigers had last year’s first-round loss to Hoover ingrained in their memories. On Saturday night, they had a chance to either replace that memory with a much more positive one, or add another bitter one.

They decided to give themselves something much better to thinking about, as they elicited a bit of revenge on the Vikings – and advance into the second round of the playoffs – with a 17- 10 victory over Hoover in a Division I Region 2 quarterfinal in front of a boisterous 6,898 fans at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

“It definitely feels good to get a win, especially in the playoffs, because we keep going,” said Tiger senior Bo Grunder, who had four clutch catches – all to pick up first downs – as well as a key stop on a fourth-and-goal play midway through the fourth quarter. “It feels good since last year. I’ve thought about that 14-7 score (in the loss to Hoover) the whole season, the offseason and the whole year. We just paid them back.”

The Tigers did so by getting arguably their best defensive performance of the season as they held Hoover’s Erick Howard to just 99 yards on 38 carries. Of those yards, 46 came on the Vikings’ third-quarter touchdown drive which cut Massillon’s lead to 17-10.

It was only the third time this season Howard, Stark County’s all-time leading rusher, was held below 100 yards. And it was 96 yards fewer than the 195 yards he gained on 40 carries in last year’s win over the Tigers.

“That’s what we wanted,” said Tiger coach Jason Hall, whose 8-3 team will now face 10-1 Twinsburg next  Saturday night at Fawcett Stadium. “We told all our kids that we weren’t just going to come up and lay into him, we were going to give him everything we’ve got every play. … It sounds kind of cliche, but we’d rather die with pride than live without it. That’s just about leaving it on the field.”

Hoover had two chances in the fourth quarter to force a tie, but were stopped both times. The Vikings reached the Tiger 6 midway through the quarter, before Grunder came up with the key defensive play on a quarterback keeper by Brett Tulodzieski four yards shy of the goal line.

The final chance came over the final two minutes of the game, as the Vikings reached the Massillon 47. But a third-down pass play didn’t pick up enough for a first down, nor did the receiver get out of bounds, and the
clock ran out, setting off a wild celebration by the Tigers.

“Give Massillon a lot of credit, players and coaches,” said Hoover coach Don Hertler Jr., whose team bows out at 7-4. “They really did a great job. I don’t know how our kids could’ve played any harder. … We just couldn’t get over the hump.”

The Tigers played from ahead almost the entire game, starting with their second drive which resulted with a 5-yard touchdown run by Jake Reiman. Reiman, starting in place of the injured Alex Winters, carried the ball three times for 36 yards on the drive and actually outgained Howard 49-35 over the first half.

Reiman finished with a career-high 65 yards on 14 carries. “I’ve said it all along, Jake can play for a lot of teams,” Hall said. “He can obviously play for us. We have three or four quality tailbacks. … Jake can run the ball, there’s no mistake about it.”

Hoover had two first-half drives which moved deep into Tiger territory. But only one of those resulted in points, as A.J. Sarbaugh booted a 43-yard field goal to cut the Massillon lead to 7-3 with 9:25 left in the half after the Vikings reached the Tiger 26.

The other drive, which moved to the Massillon 29, was snuffed out by a nifty interception by strong safety Josh Remark. “I rolled down and I saw him (Tulodzieski) get his arm back ready to throw the ball,” Remark said. “I just broke and I caught the ball. … It was all possible because he had to come my way because my teammates were getting the job done up front.”

Meanwhile, the Tigers were methodical in scoring points on their two second-quarter drives, taking at least 11 plays on each as they built up a 17-3 halftime lead. The first was a 15-play, 80-yard march which ended when Robert Partridge hit Devin Smith on a 5-yard fade route with 5:06 remaining in the half. The other was an 11-play, 68-yard drive which ended when Jeremy Geier kicked a 24-yard field goal as time expired at the half.
A key to both drives was some clutch catches by Grunder, who had three grabs for 28 yards in the quarter. All three came on either third or fourth down, and all three picked up the necessary yards to move the chains.
Grunder would come up with one more clutch catch in the fourth quarter, when he made a 23-yard grab on third-and-12 from the Tiger 16 to keep Massillon’s final drive going.

“I just want to help my team win the game,” Grunder said. “When it’s time to make a catch, they can throw it to me, Devin, J.O. (Justin Olack). We have a lot of options. It just depends on who’s open.”

GAME STATS

Massillon 17
Hoover 10

Hoover 00 03 07 00 10
Massillon 07 10 00 00 17

SCORING SUMMARY
M – Reiman 5 run (Geier kick)
H – FG Sarbaugh 43
M – Smith 5 pass from Partridge (Geier kick)
M – FG Geier 24
H – Howard 1 run (Sarbaugh kick)
Hoo Mas
First downs 18 14
Rushes-yards 48-141 22-70
Comp-Att-Int 9-22-1 17-30-0
Passing yards 127 229
Fumbles-lost 1-0 1-1
Penalty yards 8-72 11-92
Records 7-4 8-3
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing:
Massillon – Reiman 14-65 TD.
Hoover – Howard 38-99 TD; Tulodzieski 8-43.
Passing:
Massillon – Partridge 17-30-229 TD.
Hoover – Tulodzieski 9-20-127 INT.
Receiving:
Massillon – Smith 4-91 TD; Grunder 4-51; Olack 4-40; Allman 4-
38.
Hoover – Nettleton 3-31; Sarbaugh 2-43; Howard 2-17; Gardner 1-
19.