Trojans suffer close loss to Cougars, 10-6
CALIFORNIA – All Joe Kuhns could do was shake his head. What else can you do after your team plays as well as a team can play defensively, except for three pass plays, but can’t muster enough offense to win a game?
That’s what the Trojans did in Friday night’s 10-6 non-section loss to Charleroi, a team which came in listed third in WPIAL Class A rankings.
California limited Charleroi to 57 rushing yards and held vaunted running back Jermaine Thurston to 51 yards on 20 carries. The Trojans gave up 128 of Charleroi’s 147 passing yards on three plays. The first was a 54-yard touchdown pass from Doug Haney to Ethan Hank on the game’s first possession that gave Charleroi the lead for good.
But there was plenty of good football from that point, only 2:05 into the action, until the very last second ticked off the clock. And, according to Charleroi coach Nick Milchovich, plenty of very bad football, as well.
“Terrible,” was the first word out of Milchovich’s mouth. “That was probably the worst-played game I’ve seen in 11 years of coaching. Give California a lot of credit. They played hard the whole way. We lost our composure on the field and we fumbled down there at the 1-yard line.”
Kuhns, too, realized the game was rather sloppy. There were, after all, 23 penalties enforced for a combined 195 yards. Charleroi was flagged for 13 infractions, including eight for 70 yards. Among those eight were four false starts and two personal fouls on the same offensive possession. The Trojans committed 10 penalties for 80 yards. Not good, ut not totally surprising to the fourth-year coach, either.
“We’re a super young team and we made some super young mistakes,” Kuhns said. “We play defense very well and, when you are learning like our offense is, you need a strong defense. They gave us the ball a few times, but we laid it on the table for them, too. It was like a circus out there for a while.”
The Trojans, in fact, lost all four of their fumbles, including two fumbled punts, the first one leading to Adam Mudrick’s 30-yard field goal with 3:05 remaining in the third quarter that ended the scoring.
That turnover was doubly costly for Cal, since it came one possession after sophomore running back Donte Valentino ran for a 49-yard touchdown that cut Charleroi’s lead to 7-6 at the 9:36 mark of the third quarter. Valentino finished with 128 yards on 19 carries.
“He’s the kind of kis that you have to get the ball in his hands as much as you can,” Kuhns said. “But he can only handle about 19 or 20 carries a game. I don’t know if it’s because of his size (5-7, 150) or what.”
Both teams head into conference games next weekend, Charleroi with a 2-0 record and California at 0-2. Charleroi may keep its ranking, but California seems poised to make a lot of noise in the Tri-County South.
“This game gives us hope for next week,” Kuhns said of a home game against Carmichaels. “Charleroi is a very good, highly ranked team and we played them right to the end. My heart is broken for these kids right now, but we’ll bounce back and we’ll be fine.”
The game went right to the last second, when Haney took a snap to kill the clock and end one of the more exciting games of the season. Cal opened the quarter poised to score and reached the Cougars’ 31-yard line. They were trying to convert a fourth-and-8, but a penalty forced a punt.
That’s when Charleroi put together an unlikely drive that included four false starts, two personal fouls … and its other two long pass plays, a 35-yarder to Mudrick on second-and-19 and a 39-yarder to Hank on second-and-31.
Cal forced a fumble at its own goal line with 1:34 remaining and marched from its own 15-yard line to the Cougars’ 22, but an interception ended the threat and the game.