By Scott Dudinskie
BLOOMSBURG -- At 5-foot-9, John Klingerman can get lost in crowds on the football field.
But Bloomsburg's freshman receiver is difficult to miss when he's behind the defense, ball in hand, sprinting for the end zone.
Klingerman torched Southern Columbia for three long touchdown catches Friday night, two in the second half as the Panthers built a double-digit lead and held on for a 27-24 win.
The victory vaulted Bloomsburg (4-2) past the rival Tigers (3-3) into second place behind Line Mountain in the District 4 Class A standings.
Southern coach Jim Roth, fresh off his 300th career win, admitted his team will be playing for its postseason life with games against Selinsgrove and Mount Carmel still to come.
"This team is not really playing with the confidence they need to," Roth said, standing in a downpour at Panther Stadium. "We're a little too tight at times, and I think that showed in the secondary. We just didn't have that confidence to make some of the plays we needed to make."
Sophomore Blake Rankin threw for 295 yards and four touchdowns as the Panthers abandoned the running game in favor of downfield passing out of the shotgun formation. Klingerman caught five passes for 187 yards and the three scores, and senior Charles Franklin hauled in five balls for 108 yards and a TD.
"It was a game of big plays, turnovers ... lot of momentum swings, emotion and stuff," said Bloomsburg coach Larry Sones, whose team was beaten by Southern twice last season by a combined score of 96-14.
The Panthers generated next to nothing on offense on their first two series. Their rushing attack was swarmed at or behind the line of scrimmage, and Rankin was relentlessly pressured. When they went to max protection with Rankin in the shotgun on their third possession, the first pass went to Klingerman for an 80-yard score.
"They're a good run defense," said Klingerman, "but we knew we'd have single-coverage on the corners so we just went with what worked."
Southern fumbled in the red zone early in the second quarter and Bloomsburg cashed in. Rankin hit Franklin for a 32-yard gain down the right sideline and, two plays later, Frankin caught a ball tipped by Tigers linebacker Alex Fidler and turned it into a 47-yard touchdown.
Two minutes later, Bloomsburg's Remington Weigle blocked a punt and Ryan Longenberger recovered it at the Southern 1. A procedure penalty was followed by a sack, and the Tigers ended up dodging a bullet when Jared Hallick intercepted a fade pass intended for Franklin.
Southern rallied to tie the score at 14 late in the half thanks in part to an inadvertent touch of a punted ball that gave possession back to the Tigers across midfield. They went ahead 17-14 with a 38-yard Bryan Snyder field goal midway through the third quarter.
The Tigers had the lead for just 26 seconds. Klingerman burned Southern's safety for a 56-yard scoring play. Then, following an interception late in the third, he caught another perfectly thrown post pattern in front of the cornerback and raced 45 yards to make it 27-17.
"Me and Blake were practicing our timing over the weekend, working on that corner-post, and I think it really paid off," said Klingerman.
Southern got a 60-yard touchdown run from Morton with 9:21 left to pull within 27-24. The Tigers forced a punt with 6:30 to play but their possession ended with a fourth-down sack.
Bloomsburg, faced with fourth-and-6 in the last two minutes, ran a fake punt 30 yards to the Tigers' 3 and kneeled three times to run out the clock.
"If you give them one or two scores that's one thing, but when you give them four big plays like that it's tough," said Roth.
"They have a good enough defense that we have to earn it ... and we just couldn't generate enough consistency on offense."
