Dramatic plays on both sides highlight Lowell's 25-15 football season debut

A USA-365.com Special Report By Mark Smith

8-21-2004

Friday, Aug. 20, 2004,  68 degrees, sunny/clear, season opener in Crown Point

1st Q:  CROWN POINT (7-0) Mike Smith, 65-yard punt return. Donny Keiser kick (11:33 left).
2nd Q:  LOWELL (7-6) Toby Goetz, 2-yard run. 2-point run failed 70 yard drive, 15 plays (1:22 left).
3rd Q:  LOWELL (7-12)  Scott Gray, 3-yard run. 2-pt run failed. 67 yards drive, 7 plays (:06 left).
4th Q:  CROWN POINT (15-7)  Chris Rutherford, 3-yard pass from Matt Jansen. Brian Maloney, 2-pt pass from Jansen. 23-yard drive, 4 plays (8:36 left).

LOWELL (15-19) Jeff Clemens, 62-yard interception return. Jeff Clemens kick. (4:41 left).
LOWELL (15-25) Toby Goetz, 8-yard run. Kick failed. 61 yard drive, 6 plays (:40 left).

CROWN POINT (8-20-2003) - “You see a lot of strange things in the first game of the year,” smiled Crown Point coach Chip Pettit, in the locker room the night he'd seen it all.

A punt return touchdown on the first punt of the season. A basketball player who hadn't played football in two years catching key passes in a fourth quarter go-ahead drive. An apparent first down that wasn't. A non-apparent fumble that was. And finally, a big interception on a ball that probably shouldn't have been thrown. Lowell's Jeff Clemens grabbed a third down pass from Crown Point quarterback Matt Jansen and running it back 62 yards to the goal line with just 4:41 to play, bringing the visitors from behind and sparking a 25-15 victory in the 2004 season opener for both teams.

“This was a very big victory for us,” said Lowell coach Kirk Kennedy. “We made a lot of mistakes tonight and we made a lot of big plays. I guess we outlasted them. A great win. Sometimes high school football doesn't make a lot of sense.”

In front of 4,000 fans on a perfect weather night, the lead changed hands three times in the second half. Both sides gambled on fourth down plays. Both teams legitimately felt they should have won. Nobody's season was crippled on opening night in a game both sides will be replaying much of the season.

Crown Point, playing without two starting linebackers, forged a 15-12 lead with 8:26 to play after a Donny Keiser punt deflected off the head of a Lowell player and was recovered by the Bulldogs at the Lowell 23-yard-line.

Jansen (16-of-30, 160 yards) zipped a short pass to 6-foot-5 basketball player turned tight end Brian Maloney who gained 21 yards to the Lowell 2-yard-line. One play later, junior tight end Chris Rutherford made a sliding catch of a 3-yard Jansen pass in the end zone to put the home team ahead again.

The CP defense, which had given up two long scoring drives, then stopped Lowell on three plays and the Bulldogs regained possession after a punt at the CP 46 with six minutes to go. On a 3^rd-and-10 two plays later, Jansen made one of his few passing errors of the night, firing a 20-yard pass inside the hash marks that Lowell junior safety Jeff Clemens saw coming. Clemens grabbed the CP pass at his own 38, raced up the near sidelines, and cut back twice to the middle of the field for a game-breaking 62-yard score.

“He played behind the receiver and baited the quarterback,” said Kennedy. “Then when he got the ball he made a couple of nice cuts. He's very fast. A good open field runner.”

Clemens said, “I was looking at the receiver the whole time. You never want to stare into the backfield. Once I broke on the ball, I just grabbed it, made some cuts and got to the end zone. Nobody was going to stop me.”

Trailing 19-15 with 4:41 left, the Bulldogs still had a chance. On a 3^rd-and-10, Jansen scrambled outside Lowell's pass rush and raced to the Red Devil 36-yard-line. But on the next play, Jansen dropped the snap. The 6-foot-2 quarterback appeared to fall on the ball but observers say he was just sitting on top or next to it. Lowell junior linebacker Chris Lampa dived into the pile and grabbed the ball.

The Devils, aided by a 34-yard QB keeper by Lowell's Scott Schulz on 4^th-and-2 with 1:30 left, then drove 61 yards for the clinching score, an eight-yard run by Toby Goetz with 40 seconds to go.

“I thought Matt played a very good game,” Pettit would say later. “He's quite an athlete and he did a lot of good things. Just a couple of mistakes. You don't have possession until the whistle blows. Until then, it's any body's ball. We had a lot of guys making their first varsity starts and we really take a lot of positives out of this game.”

Lowell now benefits from a home opener with Calumet (a 50-8 loser to Indianapolis Manual Friday) before the Lake Athletic Conference (LAC) opener with highly-regarded rival Griffith (1-0) on Sept. 4. On that night, the Devils will need to control the game much more than they did in Crown Point.

“All you can do is play the next play,” said Clemens. “You can't worry about other plays or the big play they just made. You have to maintain the drive to win.”

One of several pivotal plays in the game came in the second quarter when Crown Point's Donny Keiser appeared to have a first down on a 4^th-and-2 run at the Lowell 32. The Bulldogs appeared to get a bad spot of the ball, short of the 30, and the ball went over to the Devils. Lowell then drove 69 yards for a TD, a 4^th-and-2 run by senior fullback Toby Goetz (23 carries, 156 yards, 2 TDs) cutting the CP lead to 7-6.

Goetz, the senior who moved from fullback to tailback this season, was a dominant player. The 216-pound power runner sparked Lowell's go-ahead TD with a 44-yard run off right tackle late in the third period. CP's Mike Smith dragged him down at the Bulldog 11 yard line but an 11-yard run by Ethan Winel set up Scott Gray's 3-yard TD run with six seconds left in the third quarter.

“Toby had to earn every one of the yards he got,” Kennedy would say later.

Jansen finest moments came early in the fourth quarter when he used the 6-foot-5 Maloney and 6-foot-2 sophomore Matt Ernest to move the ball against the smaller Lowell secondary.

Jansen was 8-of-12 for 73 yards in the first 20 minutes of the second half, not counting a 19-yard completion to Maloney that was called back by an ineligible receiver penalty. If Crown Point had won, the focus of the post-game talk would have been Jansen operating CP's four and five receiver formations. The Bulldogs had six third quarter first downs without scoring a point. Lowell eventually started blitzing outside linebackers and cornerbacks to rush the Bulldog quarterback into some key incompletions.

“We had enough personel to cover the man,” said Lampa, who was making his debut for Lowell at outside linebacker.

“So coach sent me on a couple of blitzes. And I would disguise it and say 'I've got this guy' even though one of our middle linebackers was really covering. I'd just blitz and try to put as much pressure on him as I could. I tried to get a hit and sometimes, I just tried to get a hand on the ball.”

Pettit thought that Jansen and his receivers will work more quickly with increased confidence in the weeks to come. CP appears to have a potent offense in the making.

“We ask the quarterback to do quite a bit in our offense,” Pettit reminded. “We were all over the field in the third quarter but we didn't score. And we made a couple of mistakes that really hurt us. You improve the most between week one and week two. We're a young team and we'll get a lot better.”

Last year, CP did get better after a 20-14 loss to Lowell on opening night, defeating Hobart and Merrillville in the next two weeks. The Red Devils used last year's win over CP as a springboard to an 11-2 season.

Obviously, Lowell also hopes history repeats itself. But the Red Devils have only defeated Crown Point 31 times in 87 years, which makes five Lowell wins in the last six meetings very gratifying.

“You've got to be mentally tough and overcome your own mistakes,” said Kennedy. “The credit goes to the kids. We came up with a game plan that anybody could come up with. The kids come up against a bigger, stronger team in front of a hostile crowd. But the kids believe in it and play well enough to win. The credit goes to them.”

WEEK ONE NOTES:  Pettit did not complain about any of the controversial calls. As for the fumble that referees ruled Lampa took away from Jansen, the CP coach said. “We got the ball with a 15-12 lead and six minutes to play. Two plays later, it was 3^rd-and-10. That's the point where your offensive line has to come up with that one drive to put the game away. Offensive line is a tough position to play. But we've got to be able to move the ball better on the ground when we need to.”

Lowell linebacker Chris Lampa said he got the fumble that CP quarterback Matt Jansen appeared to recover in the game's final moments and then helped the referee make the decision. “He (Jansen) got hit by Larin (Childress) or somebody. He fell on the ball but he didn't fall on it. I saw a chance to make a play and I dove in there. The ref was looking at the pile saying, 'Where's the ball. Where's the ball? And I said, I've got the ball tight here.”

The fumbled punt that set up CP's 15-12 TD was bizarre, to say the least.

Bulldog punter Donny Keiser slipped and spun a low line drive that hit a Lowell player and bounced high into the air. It appeared that Mike Smith recognized that it was a free ball and fell on it to give the Bulldogs a key possession.

“The ball hit one of our linebackers right in the face,” said Kennedy. “I don't know if we didn't recognize the situation after that or what. Our defense really didn't give up any touchdowns. Our special teams did. And I don't want to tell you who the special teams coach is.”

Kennedy coaches Lowell special teams.

The veteran Lowell coach had hoped for a little more passing success. Scott Schulz was 1-of-4 for seven yards, although a 39-yard completion to Jeff Clemens was called back due to an illegal procedure penalty. The Red Devils showed off what should be a very profitable play, a wide receiver reverse to Clemens (6-0, 170), a former halfback. Schulz will gain big yards when he fakes a handoff to Goetz and simply keeps the ball on a run-pass option sweep. 

“I thought we got a little deeper into the playbook than most Lowell teams have,” said Kennedy. “I called a fake (after the first TD). That was my decision. I thought we could get an 8-7 lead. It was my call, and, as it turned out, my mistake.”

The crowd appeared to be near the capacity, which is 4,800 at Crown Point. Early Friday rains left the field damp but the weather cleared by mid day and the crowd was probably larger than any for a game in 2003 except the home opener against Hobart. The stadium was brightly decorated with banners around the chain link fences for players and cheerleaders. Many people chose to stand around the fence and watch the game as opposed to sitting in the stands. The back-and forth nature of the contest held the crowds attention in the late going. 

“It really was a great game,” said Pettit. “Lots of action.”

“It's special to beat Crown Point,” Clemens agrees. “They're a big school. They're a big rivalry. We just try as hard as we can.”

Lowell wanted it known that they didn't really want to score the final touchdown with 40 seconds to play. Some wondered why, with a 19-15 lead in the final minute, the Devils tried to score again.

“We thought they had time outs left,” said Lowell offensive coordinator Jim Carlson. “That deserved to be an 18-15 game. If we knew they had no time outs left, we'd have fallen on the ball.”

Teams are not allowed to talk about injuries and are very hesitant to discuss suspensions but Crown Point played shorthanded defensively. Linebackers Chris Schillo (5-11, 195) and Jordan Rhye (5-11, 185) both sat out the opener. Rhye still has what is believed to be a dislocated shoulder and he may not be able to play until October. Back-up sophomore linebacker Tommy Parks (5-10, 175) is also out with an elbow injury. Parks could return for the game against Merrillville on Sept. 4. Punter Nate Soltis also did not play after a pre-season injury. The senior who averaged 31 yards a punt in 2003 could be back next week against Hobart.

Hobart lost 24-7 to Portage in week one and was outgained 340-155. Portage halfback Antoine Brown gained 147 yards on 20 carries. Hobart trailed just 10-7 in the third quarter. Merrillville got 189 yards rushing on 26 carries from out-of-state transfer James Aldridge in a 42-13 romp over East Chicago. EC did gain 351 yards on the Pirate defense, however.

Lowell might be eager to get a hold of Calumet after the Warriors gave up 381 yards rushing in the 50-8 loss to Indianapolis Manual Friday in the season opener. Calumet rushed for just 51 yards themselves.

Lowell's week three foe Griffith dominated outmanned Bishop Noll 57-13. Junior halfback Drew Rogowski scored six touchdowns, four of them on kick returns.

No northwest Indiana player in the last 20 years has scored four times on kick returns.. The Panthers did have a problem losing 203 yards on 20 penalties.

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Revised: August 23, 2004 .