Class 3A, Regional Championship: Andrean drains Twin Lakes 29-20
A USA-365.com Special Report By Mark Smith

Friday, Nov. 15, 2002  - 32 degrees, dry in Monticello

Scoring Summary:

1st Q: ANDREAN (8-0)  Rob Caldwell, 1-yard run.  Nick Stockwell, 2-point run. 80 yards, 7 plays,  8:55 left.
2nd Q: TWIN LAKES (8-6) Dewey Brown, 4-yard run. (16th TD, 10th TD rushing) Kick wide. 80 yards, 9 plays, 2 penalties, 9:02 left.
ANDREAN (15-6)  Roco Marcinak, 3-yard run (8th rushing TD). 
Mark Edwards kick.  49 yards, 8 plays, penalty - 6:00 left.
TWIN LAKES (15-13) Dewey Brown, 84-yard kickoff return. (17th TD, 3rd KO return for a TD) Colin Reid kick.
3rd Q: ANDREAN (22-13)  Brett Goins, 1-yard bootleg run.  Mark Edwards kick. 47 yards, 8 plays, penalty, 8:09.
TWIN LAKES  (22-20)  Travis Clark, 5-yard run. (53 yards, 5 plays including a 31-yard pass from Abe Winkle to Cliff Cobb) Colin Reid kick.
ANDREAN (29-20)  Roco Marcinak, 3-yard run (9th rushing TD). 
65 yards, 13 plays - Mark Edwards kick.  4:09 left

MONTICELLO, IN (11-15-2002) In some respects, I'd like this Andrean season to mimic last year and in some respects, I don't. If you remember the 2001 high school football season, (and 59er folks, I know you do) Andrean lost one game they shouldn't have lost, coasted through every state playoff game except the regional (a 10-0 struggle over Danville) and went to the state finals to lose to undefeated Bishop Chatard in Indianapolis.

This season, Andrean has lost one game they shouldn't have (that bogus IHSAA forfeit of their 67-0 win over Horace Mann), coasted through every other state playoff game (until now) and is favored to go on to lose to (that's where we need to rewrite the script) undefeated Bishop Chatard of Indianapolis in the state finals on Nov. 29.

The 'struggle' came last Friday night down by Indiana Beach where Andrean was under pressure for the first time in two months before responding to beat Twin Lakes 29-20 for their second consecutive Class 3A Regional championship.

"I think we were a little nervous," said first year coach Wally McCormack, "You could feel it in school today. A lot of it is all the expectations people have put on us saying we have to win this game."

"But really, this was a good game for us. It was good because we won, of course. But it was good because we faced some adversity. All of a sudden, we were a little scared. We saw we weren't going to blow this team out. We had to respond. Hopefully, this will help us next week.

Next week, a home game against unranked Concordia (9-4) in Merrillville, is possible because Andrean responded with three long touchdown drives after the Indians (10-3) zapped the 59er defense and special teams for impressive touchdowns.

Andrean drove 80 yards with the opening kickoff to take an 8-0 lead but Twin Lakes, sectional champions for the first time since 1998, rallied in the second period. The Indians drove 80 yards to cut the lead to 8-6 with QB Abe Winkle (8-16, 128 yards) connecting on passes of 9, 16 and 24 yards.

The 59ers immediately came back to go ahead 15-7. After a personal foul on Twin Lakes put the ball at the Indians' 49-yard-line after the kickoff, the 59ers ran the ball seven consecutive times, scoring when Roco Marcinak bowled over the goal line behind linemen Nick Ohrn (6-0, 185) and Louie Grugel 6-1, 220) on the 59ers' left side to restore the visitors 8-point lead.

Twin Lakes, which rallied for a 29-26 win over Frankfort on Nov. 8 in the sectional 19 championship game, rallied immediately when Joe Broussard picked up Mark Edwards' customary squib kick, lateraled it to Twin Lakes' Cliff Cobb, who ran a reverse with the Indians' star, senior wingback Dewey Brown. Brown (6-1, 154), the one the 59ers had been warned about raced down the home sidelines 84 yards for his third kickoff return TD of the season to make the score 15-13 with 5:43 left in the half.

"When we looked at them on film," said McCormack. "Number 5 (Cobb) and number 8 (Brown) were scoring all their touchdowns on 50 and 60-yard runs. In the quarters where they had the wind, we wanted to run the ball and keep the clock moving."

Andrean had one other weapon to fight the coast-to-coast antics of Dewey Brown. Andrean has not kicked deep on kickoffs for most of the year but when the Indians countered by lateralling the squib kicks, Andrean kicker Mark Edwards began simply rolling the kicks, basically onside kicking at every opportunity.

"Our kickoff return team has struggled a little bit," explained Edwards later, "so this way, we cover kicks better."

"They aren't really onside kicks," said McCormack. "We were just trying to keep the ball on the ground. It wasn't so much to recover it but to keep the ball away from number 5 and number 8."

For some reason Twin Lakes, couldn't adjust. On the second half kickoff, the Indians didn't close on the bouncing ball quickly enough and Andrean junior Mike Staehle recovered it at the Twin Lakes 47-yard line.  The 59ers drove to score in 10 plays with Brett Goins scoring on a naked (no blocking) bootleg on 4th-and-1 where he had to dive between two players to make it 22-13.

Andrean actually recovered the kickoff (Aaron Babb got it) after Goins' TD but they couldn't get the score that would've iced the game and Twin Lakes rallied again.

The Indians'  began to riddle the 59er secondary with Abe Winkle firing passes of 7, 31 and 36 yards to Cliff Cobb (6-0, 173). As the crowd of about 2,000 made big noise in the freezing temperatures, fullback Travis Clark ran five yards to make it 22-20 with 11:55 left in the game.

Andrean was faced with a must-move situation. Goins again came through for the Lake Athletic Conference (LAC) champions. The 6-foot-4 senior hit soph receiver Tommy Finn for gains of 4, 7 and 9 yards, the last one on a 4th-and-6 from the Twin Lakes' 34 with 7:21 left.

The 4th-and 6 conversion came moments after game officials ruled that Finn had not caught a pass he appeared to catch on 3rd-and-6 at the Twin Lakes' 20. "I thought that Tommy Finn had caught that ball on third down," said McCormack, who explained why he didn't punt. "If we punt it into the end zone, we only gain 14 yards there. They had overloaded the 'trip' side (the side where Andrean put three wide receivers).  I probably just should've played pitch-and-catch on that side (with Finn) all night. The thing is, nobody (on the pass rush) was near Brett. That's why we could do what we wanted."

McCormack always praises linemen over skill players, not unlike many coaches who feel that backs get too much credit and linemen don't get enough. "Please put their names in the paper," he said.  "Rob St. Germain and Adam Hudetz (tight ends), Joe Smock, Mark Bohling, Nick Ohrn, Joe Waters and Louie Grugel. They get offended when people say they're too small to do the job. They may not be Division I players but we're not in it for guys to get Division I scholarships. They've done the job every week this year."

After Goins made the crucial throw to Finn at the Twin Lakes' 25-yard-line, the 59ers ran five plays to score the 29-20 TD with 4:09 left in the game.

It was far from a perfect game for Andrean. The 59ers were called for 14 penalties and a 15th was refused by Twin Lakes. Andrean has lost over 900 yards to the referees in 13 games and McCormack isn't happy with the situation.

"They called motion on our center three times," said McCormack. "But I don't think the referee did a bad job. Most of the things they called, we did. Last week (against New Prairie), we didn't get that many penalties, this week we did. You guys (the media) have talked about it but I don't know what else to do."

The penalty thing is secondary at this point. Lake Central's greatest teams in the early 90s led the area in penalties. The great Oakland raider teams of the 1980s were penalty magnets in the National Football League. Iowa just went undefeated in the Big-10 and they led that college football conference in penalties.

The weakness that showed up in Monticello was in the defensive secondary.   Twin Lakes got good pass protection and Cliff Cobb caught three in a row in that final drive, all in single coverage against soph safety Tommy Finn. McCormack knows that Concordia, from the powerhouse Summit Conference in Fort Wayne, will be able to exploit an area that 59er people privately admit is a concern because Andrean did not face any good passing teams in Lake County this season.

"They've got four receivers between 6-2 and 6-7," said McCormack of Concordia. "Our secondary's going to have a challenge. We're going to get to work on it. We'll be at home. At least we don't have to go there."

About the seemingly inevitable (and much desired) rematch with Chatard, McCormack doesn't want to go 'there' either. He feels that the media making the state finals the 2002 Niners'  barometer as to whether a season is successful or not, puts too much pressure on the boys.

I understand his point but the great programs all do that.  Don't tell Chris Geesman of Penn that this was a successful season, now that Valpo kicked his Kingsmen out of the playoffs for the second consecutive year 16-15 last week. Fort Wayne teams, who have won more than a dozen state titles, point to the Dome every season. Four Summit teams (2A Bishop Luers, 3A Concordia, 4A Bishop Dwenger and 5A Snider) are all set for semistate competition and those schools publicly do not consider it a good season if they don't at least reach the state final game.  Elite prep athletic teams must call anything short of the state finals mediocre and unacceptable. That's the lesson of amateur athletics. You want to challenge quality competition. You insist on it. None of the 13 teams Andrean has played are as good as they are and Concordia probably isn't either.   But the five-time state champion Chatard, a 14-0 winner at Hamilton Heights last week, has the experience, size and  team speed to defeat the 59ers. I believe you must insist on playing the best team you can find and you want to meet them in the state finals. Not just this year but every year.  Otherwise, the effort it takes to build a top program is largely a waste of time.

And the truth is, Andrean feels the same way. They have for years now. "We want to play them again," said Edwards of Chatard. "Concordia's not a bad team. They've got a great passing attack. I think our secondary will be able to handle them. "

But you've got to go to the Dome and you've got to get another shot at Chatard, right? You've got to.

"We do," Mark said. "It's definitely our goal It's all we've been working up to. It (the 3-0 loss) was wrong. We want to play them again. Maybe I'll make a field goal this time."

NINER NOTES:   The crowd was near capacity at Monticello, with almost 500 Andrean fans cheering against 1200 to 1500 Twin Lakes fans. There's not a lot of love for Andrean in Monticello, dating back to some state basketball tournament games and some softball matchups in the regional and in the annual Twin Lakes Softball invitational each May.

"Do they always draw this many penalties?" asked a Twin Lakes official.  "Do they always complain like that."

But the Twin Lakes students showed some nastiness unbecoming of the cute, little resort town, chanting that very familiar barnyard obscenity frequently when they thought the home team got a bad call from the referees.  The TL kids heckled Andrean team managers (why the managers?) when they came on the field and the Indian players got involved in some attitude-based pushing and shoving often during the cold night.

"Not that Andrean kids don't have an attitude," said a 59er sideline watcher.

The temperature was 32 degrees at game time but that factor did not seem to favor either side.  Both squads ran the ball more than they would have in warmer weather. Some 59er fans traveled to the game in a rented bus and some of them (perhaps the more intelligent ones) remained in the bus and watched the game through the windows.

This is Andrean's fourth regional title in six years. Twin Lakes has never won a regional championship.  No public school has beaten Andrean in the state tournament since Northwood won 14-12 at Andrean on Nov. 20, 1998.

Ignoring the IHSAA forfeit of the 59ers' 67-0 September victory over Horace Mann for an unregistered referee, Andrean is now 62-16 in the past six years. 20 points is the most scored on Andrean in a playoff game since Mishawaka Marian beat the 59ers 28-7 on Nov. 5, 1999. Andrean never trailed against Twin Lakes last week. The only team that has even led the 59ers all season is still Griffith, which finished at 9-4 with a 26-6 loss at Clay last week.

Concordia's 30-14 win over St. Joseph's in the other 3A northern semistate may be a good omen for the 59ers. In the only other years that Andrean advanced to the state championship game, the 59ers defeated Fort Wayne area schools Harding (1997) and New Haven (2001) in the semistate in a game played at Andrean.

Concordia's 9-4 record is deceptive.  Other than a 25-24 loss at cross-town rival Harding, all of Concordia's defeats have come against teams that won regional championships last week.  5A regional champ Snider nipped Concordia 34-31 on Sept. 20; 2A regional king Bishop Luers smoked Concordia 31-7 on Oct. 18 and 4A regional winner Bishop Dwenger rejected Concordia 28-7 on Aug. 30.

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Revised: July 10, 2004 .