JEFFERSON - Good Knight!

That's what Mapletown's defenders were saying after Jefferson-Morgan senior tailback Ryan Knight ran for a season-high 231 yards en route to a 42-8 victory Friday night in Tri-County South Conference action.

Jefferson-Morgan (7-2, 5-2) finished with a 4-0 record at home, and has now beaten the Maples (1-8, 1-6) for the fourth straight year.

With their WPIAL playoff tickets already punched with last week's win, the Rockets could have overlooked the Maples. But, thanks to 28 points in the second quarter, J-M gave its 11 seniors a win on Senior Night.

"We didn't take this game lightly," Jefferson-Morgan coach Jan Haiden said. "We knew we had to get on a roll going into the playoffs. At first we were kind of flat, but we made the plays when we had and our defense was able to shutdown their spread offense."

It was a battle to two offenses with different philosophies, and when it came down to it, the Rockets' ground game was more potent than the Maples' air attack.

Mapletown's senior wide receiver Jarrett Porterfield, who led Class A with 45 receptions heading into the game, was limited to three catches, but still managed 101 yards. Senior signal caller Cory Minnick, who tops the list for passing in Class A, was shut down with only 118 passing yards on 6-of-21 attempts with two interceptions.

"All week long, we stress the importance of tackling and knowing your coverage," Haiden said. "This is the first time we played a team with that type of offense, and we told them to play assignment football to each coverage and play."

Knight had three scores in the second quarter and added a 15-yard plunge in the third quarter to finish off his regular season with a team-high 18 touchdowns.

The 6-1, 195-pound Knight had his longest run of the game on a 56-yard toss play from the Rockets' one-yard line in the second quarter with J-M up only 7-0.

"All evening, they were kind of jamming up things in the middle with their backers" Haiden said. "So we decided to toss it outside and see if Ryan can bounce it out for some big yards. I told him to make sure to run it wide, and if he saw a crease to hit it and he would get some yards."

Also scoring for the Rockets were senior running back Brent Moskola, dashing for a 3-yard score in the second quarter, and sophomore tailback Chris Saw sprinted for a 32-yard score in the fourth quarter.

In between those two J-M touchdowns, Minnick hooked up with Porterfield for a 78-yard catch-and-run for the lone Mapletown touchdown. On the two-point conversion, Minnick once again hooked up with Porterfield.

"I give our kids a lot of credit in the beginning of the game," Mapletown coach George Messich said. "In the first quarter, I was pleased with our defense, but as the game went on with so few kids we have, we got tired. That seems to happen to us in every game this year with a lot of our kids playing both sides of the ball.

"With everything that has gone on this year, I'm really proud of how our kids stuck with it and they showed great drive. Jefferson has some big, strong kids up front and their backs run hard. On offense, I thought we could throw against them, but we dropped a lot of passes. Jefferson is a physical team and you can't make many mistakes against them."

The Rockets will be on the road next week in the WPIAL playoffs as the third-place team in the Tri-County South, and will be hoping to learn from some hard road games this season.

"We played all of our tough games on the road this season," Haiden said. "We had some difficult game away from home, and hopefully knowing we can win and compete on the road will help us in the playoffs. You always have to be ready for the tougher teams and the hostile environments, and hopefully we can build off of that."