Big plays foil C-M in loss to Bethel Pa
CANONSBURG – The Canon-McMillan defense found it was able to keep Bethel Park from stringing first downs together and putting forth drives that chewed up the clock.
It was the big plays that foiled the Big Macs. And unfortunately for them, there were a lot of those.
Bethel Park exhibited an explosive offense, striking quickly on several occasions to earn a 40-20 victory over Canon-McMillan Friday night at Memorial Stadium to stay on pace for a chance at a Class 6-A Southeastern Conference championship.
“We got big-played a little bit,” said C-M coach Mike Evans. “We went in at halftime and I’m thinking we’re winning 80 percent of this game. But that’s where we are as a program. We’re almost, almost, almost, and that works in horseshoes. It doesn’t work in football.”
Bethel Park didn’t run many plays in the first half, nor did the Black Hawks gain many yards on most. But when they did gain yards, they gained a lot. Of the 19 plays they ran, five went for 20 yards or more, including touchdown plays of 74 and 63 yards.
Those helped Bethel Park (4-0, 4-3) build a 19-7 halftime lead.
The 74-yarder was particularly timely, as Canon-McMillan (1-4, 3-5) had just scored on a Bryan Milligan plunge to take a 7-3 lead following a short field goal on Bethel Park’s opening drive. Terron Murphy found a crack and burst past the secondary on his way to the end zone to put Bethel Park back on top in one play.
“We didn’t really impose our will on them like we do in other games,” said Bethel Park coach Jeff Metheny. “(Big plays) aren’t really our game. We like to do it four yards at a time, but we’ll take those big plays.”
Murphy gained only 14 yards on seven other carries in the first half, and the rest of the Black Hawks running game was met with similar results.
That changed in the second half. The Black Hawks struck for three more long touchdown runs, including a 24-yarder from quarterback Cole Rogers and a 71-yard run by John Doleno to stretch the lead to 33-7.
The dagger came with just under two minutes to play. The Big Macs had gotten it to 33-20 before Murphy went on a 40-yard run for the game’s final points.
“We’re real close to where we want to be, but we’re frustrated because we’re not quite there yet,” Evans said.
Milligan was a workhorse all night for Canon-McMillan. The Black Hawks completely shut down the Big Macs’ shorthanded passing attack, leaving Milligan as the only option. And he was a pretty good option, running the ball 34 times for 249 yards and three touchdowns, including an 80-yard run.
“He’s just becoming 100%,” said Evans.
Rogers completed 10 of 11 passes for 233 yards. Zachary Taylor caught three passes for 110 yards and Jeremy Wodarek had 90 yards on three catches.
“We’ve got some speed and thought we could take advantage of some stuff on the back end, and we were right about that,” said Metheny.