Carmichaels rolls past Canevin
CARMICHAELS – Maybe it’s Josephine Gresko’s cabbage rolls, or the antique car parade that rolls through town once a year. It’s pretty safe to assume it’s not the nightlife, but for whatever reason, a certain monkey has called this place home for over two decades. He hasn’t rallied anything, but instead spread frustration more and more as the years pass.
With each haunting playoff loss, the ape has grown in stature and has become increasingly difficult to handle.
That changed Friday night. Tired of being dogged, second-guessed and ridiculed, John Menhart chopped the King Kong-wannabe down to size and told him to hit the road and don’t let the door smack him in his bald posterior.
Colby Giles ran for over 200 yards and three touchdowns in the first 12:09 of the second half, and Carmichaels ended 22 years of postseason frustration with a 42-7 WPIAL Class A playoffs first-round victory over Canevin.
The win sets up a clash with Fort Cherry in the quarterfinals, and was the first in the postseason by the Mikes since 1980, when current assistant coach Richard Krause quarterbacked Carmichaels past Serra Catholic.
“That’s all we hear at Carmichaels, ‘You can’t win a playoff game. You go 9-0 and lose in the first round of the playoffs,'” Menhart said. “We’ve invented ways to lose games. It just seemed like it wasn’t meant to be.”
Which, despite the lopsided-score, seemed to be the case Friday night as well for the better part of the first half. Until Bobby Hathaway rumbled through a hole and scored from 15 yards out with 54 seconds remaining in the second quarter, the Mikes trailed 7-0.
Even after the touchdown, a failed extra-point attempt left Carmichaels on the short end of the score entering the locker room.
But unlike years in which Carmichaels had games slip away against Clairton, Farrell, Riverview and Duquesne, the Mikes scored 30 points and ground out 240 yards of offense over one quarter and one play to finally, finally, turn around their playoff fortunes.
“We knew we had to step it up and make plays,” Giles said. “This was the year we knew we had to do something. We knew at some point we were going to be down. We just had to stick to our game plan and take it one play at a time.”
Before Canevin methodically moved 66 yards in 15 plays and Lou Tenace plowed his way into the end zone on a second-and-goal from the one, Carmichaels had never trailed this season. But starting with their first possession of the second half, the Mikes played arguably their best quarter of football over the past 10 games, scoring three touchdowns and adding the two-point conversion each time.
Giles, who carried four times in the first half only to wind up in negative yardage, gave Carmichaels the lead for good 2:31 into the third quarter when he hit the line of scrimmage then bounced the played to the outside for a six-yard touchdown on second-and-goal. He finished with 202 yards on 15 carries.
The go-ahead touchdown was set up when Jono Menhart picked off a Lucas Parker pass at the Crusaders’ 38-yard line on Canevin’s third play of the third quarter. After allowing five first downs on the Crusaders’ opening drive, the Mikes defense gave up one the rest of the way.
No stop was bigger, however, than Hathaway’s hit on Shawn McDonald with 7:24 left in the first half. Leading 7-0, Canevin recovered a Carmichaels’ fumble and was threatening to add to its lead when Hathaway shot through the line of scrimmage and stopped McDonald on a fourth-and-one play at the Mikes’ 25.
Hathaway finished with 140 yards on 21 carries and scored twice. His second touchdown, a 13-yarder, followed a 60-yard Giles’ scamper late in the third quarter and made the score 30-7. Justin Zielensky added the final touchdown, scoring from four yards out with 5:19 to play.
“They (Carmichaels) came out playing smash-mouth football in the second half and we didn’t have a solution for it,” said Canevin coach Bob Jacoby. “We couldn’t even stop a dive.”