St. Joseph's 2nd Half comeback upends Andrean 28-21 for Regional crown

MERRILLVILLE (11-12-2010) For Andrean, this was the worst-case outcome, an unforgettable game. That they lost. After totally dominating the first 10 minutes and leading 21-7 at the half, the 59ers watched in horror as the fog rolled in and the visitors from South Bend zipped over, around and through them for 21 second half points and a stunning 28-21 win in the Class 3A regional championship.

St. Joseph's balanced pass and run attack, inactive as Andrean hogged the ball in the first half, posted three second half scores to advance the Indians to the 4A Northern Semistate game at home against Leo on Nov. 19. It was as bizarre a night as you will ever see in high school football.

Or not see. Heavy fog rolled in repeatedly during the game. Referees made first down calls from the field when they couldn't see the sidelines. Andrean, which averaged 37 points a game this season, led 14-0 and 21-7, but didn't score in the second half. Andrean's QB Demetri Blanco was knocked out of the game with a concussion when the game was tied with seven minutes to play. And the Niners fell about 13 yards short of tying the game with a freshman QB in the final minute.

"I don't know what to say," said 59ers coach Phil Mason after what might have been the toughest loss of his coaching career. "They wore us down. They are a big physical team."

"If we convert down here (4th and 4 at the St. Joe 18 with Andrean leading 21-14 late in the third quarter) we probably win. But we didn't and they wore us down."

St. Joseph's coach Ben Downey, whose team led Jimtown 21-6 and fell behind 22-21 before winning 24-22 in the 3A Sectional 18 championship game seven days earlier, watched his team run just 15 plays in the first half and trail by 14 points. But St. Joe had a 2-5 record after seven games.

"The whole season has been like this," Downey said before his team disappeared into the fog. "We had plays in our playoff that we weren't able to pull out in the first half because we had so few possession. They worked in the second half and we just went back to them. We couldn't try a lot of our plays because we didn't have the ball."

"That's what I said to them at the half. We know about comebacks because it happened to us last week."

In front of a relatively small crowd of about 1,000, Andrean drove 64 and 68 yards for TDs the first two times they had the ball. Demetri Blanco distributed the ball between 1,000-yard rusher Mason Zurek (6-0, 175) and sophomore fullback linebacker Zack Kogut (6-0, 190).

When St. Joe scored one play after a second quarter pass interception to cut the lead to 14-7, Andrean answered with a pass interception by Mike Dravet and a Blanco to Conner McKerrin TD pass just four seconds before the end of the second quarter. The Niners had 10 first downs and three touchdowns at halftime.

The burning question at halftime was whether Andrean would travel to Leo or West Lafayete on Nov. 19 for there 3A Northern Semistate championship.

Then, as if in a horror movie, Andrean looked off into the milky white fog and saw themselves come out of the locker room. St. Joe, the Andrean of the South Bend area, came back from the dead and shut out the home team 21-0 in the final two quarters. Mason said that the easy quick-strike TD pass in the second quarter convinced the Niner coaches to drop a second safety into pass converage, taking away from the eight-man front that worked in the first two quarters.

"At halftime, we came in and said, "we're going to have to put another safety over the top," explained Mason. "We tried one-on-one coverage in the first half and it bit us in the rear in that second quarter. That was what we were concerned about. They would pull the guard and the tackle. We'd have a 185-pound linebacker with 600 pounds coming at him."

"But those receivers are big kids. We had to cover them. Obviously I couldn't have been happier about what we did in the first half. But I was concerned about that first drive of the second half because I didn't know how much we could continue to fight them in the trenches like that. They were a lot bigger and more physical than I thought they were."

From a shot gun, three wide receiver, one-back formation, St. Joe QB Max Matthews ran a two-man option with senior halfback Petie Gillis (6-0, 175). St. Joe drove 68 yards in eight plays for a TD right after the halftime break and after stopping Andrean at the St. Joe 14-yard line on downs, the visitors drove 86 yards to tie the game with 10:21 to play in the game.

St. Joseph's drove 50 yards in four plays for the go-ahead score with 6:31 left. Gillis gained 35 yards on an option handoff along the visitor sideline to the 5-yard line. During this drive, Pavlina came to the sidelines and asked that Blanco be taken out because he didn't know where he was. The Niner QB, who is also the free safety, suffered a violent head-to-head collisions when he ran the ball on the previous series. The Niner star was very upset on the sidelines but Mason never considered putting him back in.

"We weren't going to risk his health after that," said the coach. "He never even asked to go back in. I think he knew."

Andrean almost pulled off a dramatic finish after Blanco was out of the game. Trailing 28-21 with 6:31 left, the Niners went without a QB for the first series. Leading rusher Mason Zurek lined up in the 'Wildcat formation' and ran the ball seven times in eight plays, falling short on 4th-and 2 from the 33-yard-line. The Niner defense forced a short punt, which Andrean's Brandon Pavlina ran back to the St. Joseph's 43-yard line with 1:11 to go.

Coach Mason then inserted freshman Bryan DeSomer, the Niners' JV QB to lead one final push. DeSomer, a Lowell resident, completed a 24-yard pass to Pavlina to the St. Joseph's 19-yard line. DeSomer scrambled for a 3-yard gain to the St. Joe 16 but three more passes fell incomplete.

"We went with the Wildcat to see what we could do," said Mason of the final two series. "I really didn't want to put a freshman in that position. But then he came up and made a heckuva throw. He's going to be a great player for us. There's no doubt about it."

"Do I wish I'd have put him in earlier? No I don't. I wanted our guys to go with the Wildcat and give them a chance to get us down there."

"But what are you going to do? The biggest fear of any team in 1A to 4A is losing your quarterback. It's no secret that he (the starting QB) gets 95% of the snaps (in practice) this time of year. When you're playing a team you know you'll beat, you get the backup QB ready. You get him a lot of simple sets that he can use. But that stuff's over this time of year."

Mason insisted his team had beaten the odds and pre-season predictions and that's true. But Andrean is a school that sets the state finals as the ONLY goal. The Niners have surely long since tired of 'proving everybody wrong' but falling well short of the state finals.

This is the fourth consecutive season Andrean has lost the regional championship game and the second time they've lost at home to St. Joseph's.

"We weren't supposed to be any good," Mason said of his 8-5 team. "We graduated a super season class. Our enrollment's at 580 and we have 65 kids out for football. But this place is special. They're good kids. I don't know if other schools get the same thing out of their kids that we get out of ours."


NINER NOTES: Andrean was 9-4 last year and lost 10-7 at Jimtown in the rgeional championship game. The Niners last regional championship came in 2004 when they won the 3A state title. The biggest single plays of the game came early. Back to back.

Leading 14-0, Andrean's Demetri Blanco had a screen pass intercepted by St. Joe's Maria Aversa and ran back to the Andrean 19-yard line. On the next play, St. Joseph's QB Max Matthews fired a 19-yard touchdown pass to senior receiver Antonio Winn slanting toward the goal posts. Those back-to back plays changed the game dramatically as the TD influenced Andrean to change their defensive strategy.
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"They just read it," Andrean coach Phil Mason said of the screen pass. "They sat on it. Obviously we'd like to see Demetri run that ball, but he was trying to make a play. That was a big momentum swing there. But we did get the interception at the other end and Demetri ran for that touchdown right before the half."

This may be the final meeting between St. Joseph's and Andrean for awhile. Andrean's enrollment has dropped to the point where they may be a 2A school when schools are reclassified after this season.

"I would be surprised if we weren't," Mason said. "Our sophomore class is a very female heavy class and girls don't count. A lot of people don't understand that. Your enrollment (for football) is based on boys."

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Revised: November 14, 2010 .