By The Daily Item
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Danville coach Jim Keiser was embarrassed, but he wasn’t seeing red. No, he was seeing yellow. Lots and lots of yellow.
Keiser’s Ironmen, who posted a huge opening-night win — 21-7 over Shikellamy in a Heartland Athletic Conference Division I clash — were flagged an incredible 14 times for a whopping 157 yards.
It was the only blemish on the night and, while not at all pleased about it, Keiser conceded, “I’m not happy with it, but we came out of here with a win against a good team like Shikellamy. A win kind of takes some of the sting away.”
However, he said the team would quickly get to work this week addressing that situation.
“The stupid penalties we had are going to hurt us. I just can’t believe that we are a veteran team doing stuff like that. That’s got to be cleaned up before next week that’s for sure. That’s not Danville football, that’s not how we play.”
WHO’S THAT GUY? Shikellamy had enough trouble Friday night stopping bruising senior fullback Russell Heath (136 yards on 18 carries, 2 TDs) and speedy senior halfback Anthony Sori (9-102, 47-yard TD run). It almost seemed unfair for the Ironmen to unleash senior fullback Kody Getkin into the mix as a change of pace. The 5-foot-6, 160-pound Getkin — who had an interception as well — pounded and literally leaped his way to 70 yards on just seven carries, including three runs of 11 yards each, two more of 10 and one that went 24 yards.
“How many guys expected Kody to come out and run the football the way he ran the football and then you got Sori, we knew what we had there, and Russell Heath, well, he’s Russell Heath,” said Keiser.
BIG VICTORY: Keiser knows it was only the opener, but the win was a huge one for the Ironmen. “That’s a darned good football team. Don’t take anything away from them. They had a bunch of injuries coming in, but they are only going to get better. We were fortunate.”
CHANGES NEEDED: Shikellamy coach Sam Stroh said that, in addition to cutting down on the turnovers (they had four in the loss), the Braves need to change some things to take away the blitzes that Danville used effectively to make things tough on senior quarterback Garrett Pope and the passing game.
“We need to change up our snap count a little more to catch them more offsides, things like that, little things,” he said. “And we have to do a better job of picking up the blitzers.”
He said the passing game looked good at times, but would have been better with more protection for Pope and without a couple of dropped balls. That would open up the running game, he said.
LONG SEASON: Stroh said one loss to a good Danville team does not mean the season is lost. “It’s not like we lost to anybody that’s not really good. We live to fight again another day. We’ve got nine more of them. We will come back, hopefully we will come back strong and build on some things. It’s not a one-game season. This wasn’t the Super Bowl.”
1 A.T.: East Juniata began year one A.T. (After Truitt) with a 28-0 shutout of Bucktail in the season and All-America Conference opener for both teams and it looks like the Tigers will be fine at running back.
Truitt, the school’s all-time leading rusher, graduated leaving a big hole in the Tigers’ backfield. Nick Kratzer more than ably filled that void Friday, carrying the ball 26 times for 216 yards (8.3 per carry).
Kratzer, a junior, is nearly halfway to his total from all 2009 when he ran for 441 yards in 11 games.
GROUND GAME: Speaking of rushing numbers, Southern Columbia and Line Mountain tore up the Eagle Stadium turf Saturday night, each rushing for more than 230 yards.
Both teams had a 100-yard rusher — Tyrell Thomas for Southern, Marty Beninsky for Line Mountain — while Jake Morton (81 yards for SCA) and Joey Hukill (73 for LM) also had big days.
Even more impressively, however, was that the teams combined for 10 touchdowns, all of them on the ground.
BIG GAINERS EARLY: In Line Mountain’s outstanding opening quarter on Saturday night, the Eagles had four rushing plays of more than 25 yards against the Southern defense. It was easy to see why Line Mountain ran for 198 yards and led 20-0 after one quarter.
The Tigers’ defense did a much better job against the Eagles’ running game out of the spread offense in the final three quarters.
Removing a 12-yard run by Kyle Troutman and Beninsky’s run for a 21-yard scamper on the first Line Mountain play of the second half, the Eagles had minus-eight yards on 13 carries until their final drive of the game.
GROWTH SPURT: Both Mount Carmel coach Carm DeFrancesco and quarterback Eddy Stewart pointed to Stewart’s development as key component in Friday night’s 14-0 victory over defending PIAA Class AAA champion Selinsgrove.
A perfect example of that came during the Red Tornadoes’ clinching 96-yard drive in the second half on Friday.
Stewart and Mount Carmel were facing a third-and-five from the 50. Stewart checked out of the original play, switching into a seam pass to his tight end Michael Stutzcavage for 20 yards and a first down.
“The key pop pass to our tight end (in the long drive), he checked to it. He made that call,” DeFrancesco said. “We said at the beginning of the year that he was going to call his own plays. He’s learning how to read defenses.”
“Knowing when to check out of the stuff now really helps. I feel really confident,” Stewart added.
THAR SHE BLOWS: The scoreboard horn that signals the end of each quarter wasn’t functioning at West Snyder Middle School on Friday night.
So to announce the end of each 12-minute period between East Juniata and Bucktail, the scoreboard operator had to improvise. A canned airhorn was brought up to the pressbox and used in lieu of the scoreboard horn.
When the operator signaled the end of the first quarter — by leaning out of an open pressbox window and releasing a blast — many fans within about a 50-foot radius were caught off guard by the ear-splitting screech and reacted accordingly.
But by the time the fourth and final airhorn sounded to end East Juniata’s 28-0 victory, most fans were either busy celebrating or had become accustomed to the blare, with little or no reaction the last time around.
