Aug. 15, 2009

Football: Defense Dominates Early, Offense Uses Trick Play to Win Scrimmage

    Youngstown – In the first jersey scrimmage of fall camp, the Defense rose to the occasion early, but the offense's nifty trick play on the final snap of the scrimmage proved to be the game winner. With the win the offense retains the Red Jerseys for at least a week with a come-from-behind 52-49 victory on Saturday morning at Stambaugh Stadium.
    The offense trailed 41-9 after committing three early turnovers, but steadily they mounted a comeback.
    Trailing 49-44 on the final series, the offense faced a 4th-and-9 at their own 36. Freshman quarterback Kurt Hess connected with wide receiver Aaron Pitts at midfield, who flipped a perfect lateral to Dominique Barnes and he raced 50 yards for the game-winning score.

    Heacock said the offense stepped up when it needed to in time to pull out the win and keep the Red jerseys.

    "Some of the seniors spoke afterward and some on the offensive side said they came out a little flat and the defense was fired up," Heacock said. "But you have to win the fourth quarter and the offense did and the defense didn’t and that’s what it came down to. It was a good football scrimmage."
    The defense seized control of the contest early by making numerous tackles for losses and creating three turnovers. Scott Sentner recovered a Jamaine Cook fumble, Na'eem Outler made a diving interception of a Brandon Summers pass and Vinnie Patella recovered another Cook mishandle to help put the defense in front.
    In the first three series of the scrimmage, the defense held the offense to negative yardage on 17 snaps.
    For the scrimmage, sophomore linebacker David Rach had 12 stops, sophomore linebacker Deonta Tate had 11 and Mychal Savage finished with nine.

    Heacock said both units came to play at different times.

    "I think the turnovers early gave the defense some points but the offense made some big plays down the stretch," he said.  "The one thing with the offense is they hung in there and kept playing the whole game. It wasn’t going well but they kept playing and never gave up."

    Once the offense got some momentum they were hard to stop.
    Their first score came when sophomore Dailyn Campbell connected with Barnes from seven yards. Soon after, Marc Kanetsky found Dionte Snow from eight yards to trim the deficit to 44-31.

    The defense kept the offense's top unit off the board, but the second unit were the difference makers.

    Wide receiver Josh Lee took a reverse 14 yards for a score and Hess hit Snow on a two-point conversion in the back corner of the end zone pulling the offense within 49-44.
    On the final drive, the offense started with an illegal formation penalty, but hung tough. Hess tossed a a two-yard pass to Cook and had a four-yard rush. On third down, Hess threw an incomplete pass setting the stage for his fourth-down heroics.

    For the scrimmage he completed 5-of-11 passes for 106 yards. Brandon Summers was 7-of-9 for 35 yards, Kanetsky was 9-of-13 for 77 yards and a score, Campbell was 7-for-8 for 36 yards and TD toss.

    Heacock said the plan was to get Kanetsky and Campbell involved in the offense as much as possible.

    "We wanted to get Marc Kanetsky and Dailyn Campbell in there today," he said. "We took the (black) jersey off of Dailyn because that is part of his game. He is a run around guy and that is what Brandon (Summers) is too. But Dailyn has been in and out and we wanted to give him a shot to be who he is and he did ok with it."

    The Penguins are exactly three weeks from the 2009 season opener at Pittsburgh. YSU takes on the Panthers at Heinz Field on Sept. 5.