Open the Fawcett
John Kampf,
[email protected]
11/26/2006
Cardinals will be playing for first football state title
MASSILLON - For more than 47 minutes Saturday night, Bill Deitmen was a non-factor.
Mentor's senior running back, who entered the game with 1,304 yards rushing this season, was nowhere to be found.
So the generously measured Deitmen told his quarterback exactly where he could be found.
After being bottled up virtually all night, Deitmen hauled in a short dump-off pass from Bart Tanski and sprinted to the end zone for the go-ahead score with 33 seconds remaining. The touchdown led Mentor (13-1) to an 18-13 win over Canton McKinley at Massillon's Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, clinching a spot in next weekend's state championship against Hilliard Davidson.
"If no one blitzes, I'm the check-down," Deitmen said of the play that resulted in the score. "I told (Tanski) the check-down would be open."
Boy, was it ever.
After Tanski picked up a first down with a scramble to the 18 with 54 seconds remaining, the Cardinals hurried to the line of scrimmage with no timeouts remaining. Tanski rolled out and seemed to be receiver-less until he located the 5-10, 180-pound Deitmen standing alone at the 12 yard line. Tanski loped the ball to Deitmen, who had nothing but green artificial turf between he and the end zone.
A hit at the goal line didn't keep Deitmen out of the end zone.
Any hope of a McKinley last-second victory was dashed when Brady DeMell and Shane Molder sacked Bulldogs quarterback Dan Grimsley as time expired, sending the Mentor faithful into a deafening frenzy.
"We talked about a state championship, and we're four quarters away," Mentor coach Steve Trivisonno said in a jubilant locker room. "That's what we work for year-round. It's there, now we've go to go get it."
The Cardinals will be playing for the state championship at Fawcett Stadium, the home field of the team they beat to get to the title bout. And they did it despite having their running game shut down and despite not even having the ball for much of the night.
McKinley (12-2) not only outgained Mentor, 349-309, but it also held onto the ball for two-thirds of the game, with 31:08 of possession compared to 16:52 for the Cardinals.
"All night long, I thought our defense played outstanding," McKinley coach Brian Cross said. "But at the end, they snuck a back out and got him the ball. ... They played hard and made the play at the end of the game."
It was more than that, though. Mentor had a huge goal-line stand in the third quarter to keep McKinley out of the end zone. And even after giving up the lead on a three-yard run by Will Sheeler midway through the fourth, the Cardinal defense got another important stop late in the game when Sheeler was stopped for no gain, forcing McKinley to punt with a little more than two minutes remaining.
Tanski operated the two-minute drill almost to perfection. With his team trailing, 13-12, The News-Herald player of the year completed passes to Brandon James and Mike Popelas to move to ball to midfield. After Tanski ran for 14 yards, two passes fell incomplete, setting up a third-and-10 from the 38.
But on the next play, Steve Orkis laid out for a 10-yard reception to keep the drive alive.
"That was a huge play," Cross said. "The kid made a great catch."
Two Tanski runs sandwiched around an incomplete pass set the stage for the game-winning pass.
"That's the first time it's worked in I don't know how long," Deitmen said. "Probably since the St. Ignatius game (in Week 4)."
Tanski, who was 19-for-37 for 214 yards and two touchdowns, said he was more nervous during the final 33 seconds than he was on the winning drive.
"I was just thinking, 'The defense better not give up a score,' " he said with a laugh.
The Mentor defense gave up yards, but not many points. Mr. Football candidate Morgan Williams, who scored 13 touchdowns in the first three playoff games, was "held" to 118 yards and "only" one touchdown. He limped noticeably for most of the game and shared carries with Grimsley, Sheeler and George Tabron.
"He was nicked up in the first quarter," Cross said. "He had some ankle soreness. Somebody fell on it. He couldn't run with the same intensity, but he ran with heart."
Williams' one-yard plunge opened up a 7-0 lead, a margin that quickly dwindled when the Cardinals answered with a scoring drive that ended in a five-yard option run by Deitmen.
Each team missed long field goals in the first half, and the score stayed at 7-6 until Tanski hit Tyler Schutz on a 32-yard post pattern early in the fourth for a 12-7 lead. Despite taking the lead on Sheeler's jaunt one drive later, Cross lamented his team's inability to score in the red zone.
The 13-play drive that ended with Mentor's goal-line stand, as well as a fumble by Sheeler on Mentor's 13 after a long pass, stuck with the fourth-year McKinley coach.
"Take nothing away from Mentor," Cross said. "But we stopped ourselves a lot. We had opportunities and didn't cash in when we needed to."
While Mentor did cash in when it needed to, successfully completing a transformation from a program that was pasted by McKinley, 49-0, in Trivisonno's first season (1997).
The Cardinals got outgained by the Bulldogs and didn't have the ball very much, but still found a way to win despite having the running porting of their vaunted offense completely shut down.
But while the run was bottled up, the pass was still there.
"You can't stop everything," Deitmen said. "I'll say it 'til the day I die."
Or at least until someone puts a state championship trophy into his hands.
?The News-Herald 2006
