Tag: <span>Antoine Winfield</span>

Massillon Tigers Black Letter Logo History

1994: Massillon 6, Akron Garfield 21

Tiger lament: Missed opportunities
Massillon falls 21-6, but score not indicative of tilt

By JOE SHAHEEN
Independent Sports Editor

When your offense gets inside the “red zone” against the rug­ged Akron Garfield Golden Rams defense, it had better put some points on the scoreboard.

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The Massillon Tigers learned that lesson the hard way, squandering two “golden” scoring opportunities in the first half and falling to the de­fending Akron City Series champions 21‑6 Friday night in front of 15,772 at muggy Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

The defeat drops Massillon to 2‑1 on the season with the Man­sfield Tygers scheduled to visit next Friday. Garfield improves to 2‑1.

The Tigers had all the better or it in the first half, but failed to put any points on the board. Garfield recharged its batteries at halftime and dominated play in the third and fourth quarters.

Massillon took the opening kickoff and marched to the Garfield 10 before stalling.

The drive was keyed by senior tailback Leon Ashcraft, who returned the kickoff 43 yards to the Rams 45‑yard line. Ashcraft found a hole over left guard and picked up 12 more on the second play of the drive to move the ball inside the 30.

On fourth‑and‑four, quarter­back Willie Spencer gave the drive life by hitting Ryan Sha­nor over the middle for a first down at the 16. Vinny Turner picked up three yards on first down and Spencer added three more on second down.

But Ashcraft was stuffed for no gain on third‑and‑four at the 10 and Garfield’s Antoine Win­field came up with an intercep­tion in the end zone on fourth down to end Massillon’s first threat.

“When you get backed up your own goal line,” said Garfield coach Bill McGee, “sometimes character comes through and our guys had char­acter tonight. I was real pleased we got solid and tough when we had to. Of course, you don’t have to defend as much ground, so it gets easier.”

Garfield’s next three posses­sions and the Tigers next two series ended in punts.

Brennan Rohr returned the Rams’ third punt of the evening from the Tiger 35 to near mid­field and Massillon would mount its second serious march of the night from that point.

Ashcraft got the orange‑and-­black started by picking up 11 yards on first down. Then, on second‑and‑nine from the Gar­field 40, the Massillon line opened up a hole over left guard and tackle, and Ashcraft burst 18 yards to the Rams’ 21.

Turner picked up eight more on first down, prompting Gar­field head coach Bill McGee to call for time out. It didn’t help much as Spencer rolled around right end for 10 yards to the three‑yard line two snaps later and it looked like the locals would draw first blood.

But with first‑and‑goal at the three, Massillon’s second opportunity to put up points went by the boards. Ashcraft was tackled for a loss of two on first down. Spencer lost four on a rollout on second down, then was sacked by Damon Turner for an 11‑yard loss on third down.

After a delay of game, Massil­lon faced a fourth‑and‑goal from the 26 and Spencer’s pass went out of the end zone for a Garfield touchback.

“Against a team the caliber of Garfield, you can’t miss those opportunities,” said a de­jected Jack Rose in the Tiger locker room. “That was a big series for them when we got it down there and didn’t get in right before the half. It kind of took the momentum away from us a little bit. If we had punched it in there, it would have been a different ballgame.

“Give Garfield a lot of credit. They really controlled the line of scrimmage down there. We just couldn’t block them.”

Despite failing to score in the first 24 minutes, Massillon had the better of things. The Tigers out gained Garfield 100‑to‑65, re­corded eight first downs to the Rams’ four, and owned a time of possession advantage of 14:26 to 9:34.

But the most important sta­tistic, the score, was still 0‑0 and Massillon’s inability to put up any points proved fatal.

“I was happy to be 0‑0 at half­time, especially the way we played offense in the first half,” McGee admitted. “I knew we wouldn’t play that way the en­tire game.”

Obviously, he was correct. The Rams opened the second half by driving from their 22 to the Tigers 38 in eight plays. But Spencer fell on a Garfield fum­ble on the 29 yard line to quell the incursion.

Again the Tigers marched, sparked by runs of 14 and 31 yards by Ashcraft, who finished the night with 142 yards on 19 carries. Massillon had first-­and‑10 at the Garfield 25, but failed to gain any yardage on the next three downs. On fourth-­and‑10, Damon Turner sacked Spencer for an 11‑yard loss.

On the ensuing series Gar­field moved from its 36 to the Massillon 47, where it was second‑and‑five. Desmond Bell took a handoff and attacked the middle of the Tiger line. He burst through a small seam as if he were launched by a rocket didn’t stop until he struck paydirt. The kick made it Garfield 7, Massillon 0 with 4:04 to play in the third.

Massillon coughed up the football at their 30‑yard line on its next possession and Garfield went for the kill. Winfield and Bell took turns blasting into the Massillon line. Then fullback Eric McKinstry took three handoffs in a row, diving in from the one on fourth‑and‑goal at 11:22 of the fourth quarter. The PAT made it 14‑0 Garfield.

Massillon came back with a 13‑play, 79‑yard march. Ashcraft had bursts of 19‑ and 14‑yards to move the ball to the Garfield 40. Spencer hit Rohr for 13 yards and then found Tur­ner for 10 more to the Rams’ 2. The senior quarterback culmin­ated the drive by scoring on a rollout around left end, making a superb cutback at the 3‑yard line to elude a final defender.

The Tigers tried for a two­ point conversion, but the pass was intercepted and it was a 14­-6 game at the 5:28 mark.

There was still time for the locals and the comeback looked possible when Garfield faced a second‑and‑20 at its 10‑yard line. But Winfield dashed the hometown hopes by slashing up the middle and dashing 73 yards before Courtney Herring drag­ged him down from behind all the way down to the Tiger 17‑yard line.

Six plays later, Alonzo Wal­lace kept the football on the op­tion play and swept around right end for the icing‑on‑the­-cake TD with just l:50 to play.

“I thought our defense did a great job,” Rose said. “They couldn’t have played any better. Take a couple of plays out of there and we really shut them down. That last run of Win­field’s for 72 yards … up until then we had him contained. But a great player makes great plays in big games, and he made a couple on offense and defense. ”


Leon Ashcraft

Massillon Tigers Black Letter Logo History

1992: Massillon 13, Akron Garfield 14

Hard day’s night in Tigertown
Garfield rally provides 14‑13 upset

By STEVE DOERSCHUK
Independent Sports Editor

It rained Friday, hard enough, maybe, to wash tomorrow into today. For the Massillon Tigers, 14‑13 losers to Akron Garfield, tomorrow got here too soon.

“I told the team before the season, ” Tiger head coach Jack Rose said after his football team fell to 2‑1, “we would face a crisis sometime this season. “Obviously, it got here with this game. It’s tough.”

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“But,” added Rose, “I really feel we’ll bounce back. We’ll have a good week of practice. Our kids will play hard … they’ll play as well as they can against Moeller.”
Cincinnati Moeller, 6‑0 in the all‑time series against the Tigers will pay a visit next Saturday to Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, where 9,950 saw last night’s game.

Meanwhile, tomorrow couldn’t have arrived at a better time for Garfield. “We use a lot of two‑way players,” explained Garfield head coach Bill McGee. “We want October to get here. Tonight felt like October.” It felt that way because of the rain, because it was cool. Consequently, some of the energy the two‑platoon Tigers might have sapped from the Rams on a hot day hung around.
It was there after the Tigers broke a 7‑7 halftime tie with a touchdown in the middle of the third quarter.

Garfield marched 59 yards after the ensuing kickoff . Junior running back Frank Idley scored from nine yards out with 2:25 left in the third quarter. Since the Tigers had misfired on the previous extra‑point kick attempt, Garfield’s Mark Glockner was able to give his team a 14‑13 lead by booting it through when it was his turn.

When the Tigers couldn’t keep moving on a fourth-quarter drive that pushed the ball to the Garfield 15‑yard line, the Rams toughened up and rode out the 14‑13 lead until it was the final score.

The rain couldn’t wash away yesterday. Not for Garfield’s senior quarterback, Joe Nemith. Nemith said a recurring thought kept flashing through his mind throughout the game. ”Sixty to 13,” was the thought, he said. “That’s all … 60 to 13.”

That was the score by which the Rams lost to the Tigers in 1991. “Our kids were highly motivated by that 60‑13 theme,” McGee said. “It was real embarrassing for us … not that Massillon ran it up, or anything like that. We just had one of our poorer teams.”

This year’s team is different. It has at least five seniors with a shot at landing a Division I college scholarship. It has sophomores who should keep the 2‑8 nightmare that was the 1991 season from happening again soon .

“I’ve said all along they play harder this year,” Rose said. “They have a lot of talent. They have good speed and good balance.”
McGee, who says the goal of his team (now 2‑1) is to win the 1992 state title, returned the compliment. “I underestimated how physical a team Massillon is,” he said. “That was one of the harder‑hitting games we’ve played in a long time.”
There were a few hard feelings afterward. Most of Garfield’s players punctuated their post‑game celebration by dancing on the Obie the Tiger insignia on the middle of Massillon’s sand‑turf field.

By that time, most of the Tigers were near the locker room. Some of them saw the celebration and went out to meet it. There was some shoving, but the mini‑melee was quickly broken up. McGee didn’t endorse the actions of his team. “Get your fat (butt) back to the locker room,” he told one of his linemen.

But he understood it. “That was all about something that happened before the game,” he said. “Their players all congregated on the tiger. The problem was, they cross the 50‑yard line and pushed some of our players out of the way to do it.”

There were also some hard feelings in the stands. Some directed their anger at Rose, who is in his first year as Tiger head coach. “Go back to Kent State,” a few of them yelled. Rose was an assistant coach at Kent State before becoming the Tigers’ defensive coordinator in 1991.

The loss was tough on Rose. He looked like a man who had been up all night in the postgame locker room. But he is a tough man. He was composed as he assessed the loss.

“The main thing,” he said, “was that we kept shooting ourselves in the foot … penalties … turnovers … mistakes.”

The game was tense throughout. Garfield woke up the crowd right away when sophomore sensation Antoine Winfield returned the opening kickoff from his 8‑yard line to the Tigers’ 5 before Dan Hackenbracht brought him down. A clipping penalty on the return put the ball on Massillon’s 25, but Garfield needed only five plays to run it in. On third down from the 7, Winfield lined up at left halfback in the T‑formation (three back) offense, took an inside handoff, and streaked up the middle for a touchdown. Glockner’s kick made it 7‑0.

The Tigers wound up with only three first‑half possessions, which will happen against a good ball‑control team. They made it to the Garfield 15 on the first and to the Garfield 32 on the second, but didn’t score until the third.

Quarterback Mike Danzy threw a 31‑yard touchdown pass to tight end Todd Peters with 1:32 left in the half. Peters ran an end zone route and Danzy hit him with a well‑thrown bomb that barely eluded the sophomore, Winfield, who was streaking in front of him.

Jason Brown’s kick created a 7‑all halftime score.

Early in the third quarter, Tiger cornerback Scott Brediger recovered a Winfield (yes, the soph plays running back, too) fumble at the Garfield 35.

A holding penalty set up a third‑and‑19, and Danzy tried to hit flanker Alonzo Simpson on a post pattern near the goal line. Again it was the soph, Winfield, arriving on the scene to make the interception; however, Garfield was stuck with the ball on its own 4‑yard line.

Switching to running back, Winfield fumbled on second down and the Tigers’ Joel Smith recovered at the 1. Tiger senior Eugene Copeland scored on the next play, but Brown’s extra point try was wide left, and the Tigers led 13‑7 with 6:23 left in the third quarter.

Garfield drove 59 yards for the decisive points after the ensuing kickoff. A 9‑yard run by Frank Idley and the conversion kick made it 14‑13 with 2:25 left in the third quarter,

Key plays were a pair of 13‑yard completions from Nemith to senior end Eugene Lewis.

“They were bringing a strong safety to the strong side and I was throwing to the short side,” Nemith said. “We were in a spread formation and we’d send the tight end to the flats, up the seam.

Garfield then pulled a stunner by onside kicking, but the Tigers recovered near midfield.

The Tigers spent the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth quarter driving the ball ‑ running it, mostly. A bootleg run of 17 yards gave the Tigers a first down on the 16. But two runs for a total of one yard and a holding penalty stalled the drive, then Danzy was sacked for a 19‑yard loss that was nearly worse than that. Danzy threw while he was going down and the ball was picked off by a Garfield lineman who would’ve had clear sailing to the end zone. The Tiger quarterback, though, was ruled down, as McGee scolded a Ram assistant coach who blew his stack over the ruling.

Garfield then staged a drive reminscent of 1987, the last time the Rams beat the Tigers. They completed a pass to loosen things up and otherwise used Idley and Winfield on runs. They took the ball from their own 17 to the Tiger 16. There was 2:43 left when B.J. Payne stopped Idley at the 16 on fourth down.

Danzy scrambled for a yard, then threw three incomplete passes. On fourth down, Danzy lobbed what seemed destined for a completion to Peters, but there he was again ‑Winfield ‑ flashing in to knock away the pass.

Garfield took over and ran out the clock. The Rams wound up with a 213‑160 advantage in total offensive yards. They got away with gridiron murder, fumbling six times, losing four of the cough‑ups. Idley was the workhorse, rushing 87 yards in 23 carries. Nemith didn’t pass much, but he did it effectively ‑ 5‑for‑6 for 58 yards.

Tiger running back Andre Stinson left the game in the first half with a bruised thigh and was replaced by Hackenbracht. Stinson returned in the second half and wound up with 48 yards in 11 carries. Hackenbracht was the Tigers’ second‑leading rusher with 42 yards in eight carries.

“It was a good game,” con­cluded Garfield’s coach, McGee. “We’re a good team. We win here occasionally.”

The Tigers, meanwhile, are a team facing a crisis: trying to rebound from a tough loss, and having to do it against Cincinna­ti Moeller.

GARFIELD 14
MASSILLON 13
M G
First downs rushing 8 10
First downs passing 2 4
First downs by penalty 1 1
Totals first downs 11 15
Net yards rushing 116 155
Net yards passing 44 58
Total yards gained 160 213
Passes attempted 14 6
Passes completed 3 5
Passes int. by 0 1
Kickoff average 44.0 31.7
Kickoff return yards 39 111
Punts 2 2
Punting average 33.0 40.0
Punt return yards 8 0
Fumbles 2 6
Fumbles lost 1 4
Penalties 5 6
Yards penalized 44 55
Number of plays 47 55
Time of possession 18:27 29:33

Alliance 7 0 7 0 14
Massillon 7 0 6 0 13

G ‑ Winfield 7 run (Glockner kick)
M ‑ Peters 31 pass from Danzy (Brown kick)
M ‑ Copeland 1 run (kick failed)
G ‑ Idley 9 run (Glockner kick)

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING
(M) Copeland 4‑12, Stinson 11 48, Danzy 5‑6, Seimetz 3‑7, Hackenbracht 842, Dixon 2‑1.
(G) Idley 23‑87, Campbell 3‑18, Nemith 8‑10, Winfield 15‑40.

PASSING
(M) Danzy 3‑14‑1, 44;
(G) Nemith 5‑6‑0, 58.

RECEIVING
(TD) Copeland 1‑5, Peters 2-39.
(G) Lewis 4‑42, Winfield 1‑16.

Dan Hackenbracht