Mistakes break Burgettstown against SSB
BURGETTSTOWN – Penalties, fumbles and a basic, but effective, offensive game plan by South Side Beaver – combined with its own defensive struggles – doomed Burgettstown Friday.
The Senior Night didn’t go the way coach Greg Marshall or anybody else at Burgettstown wanted, and the Blue Devils fell to South Side Beaver, 38-14, at Hill Memorial Stadium.
For Marshall, the night was straightforward. South Side (3-0) did what it needed to do and Burgettstown (2-1) didn’t.
“They went out there, and they executed,” Marshall said. “They run what they run and they do it well. They made the plays, and we didn’t.”
On South Side’s seven offensive possessions – not counting one at the end of the first half that started with less than a minute left or one at the end of the game that ended in a kneel down – the Rams scored six touchdowns and drove close to the goal line on the one that didn’t end in a TD.
For South Side coach Luke Travelpiece, this statistic was “great” and will lead to increased faith in the offensive strategy amongst his players.
“It helps the buy-in with the system,” Travelpiece said. “It’s not a fancy system and everybody gets so excited about the spread and all those things. But if you have a night like this, and it was the same thing in Week 0, when you can have those kinds of results, it helps with the buy-in. And as you get the buy-in even stronger, it helps everything just start rolling.”
South Side scored on its first possession. After Alex Arrigo recovered a fumble and gave the Rams starting field position at Burgettstown’s 20-yard line, South Side cashed in, scoring on a 1-yard run by Brodie Almashy.
South Side added on in its next possession, which ended on a 30-yard touchdown pass from Almashy to Ryan Navarra.
Navarra finished the night with 121 yards on 14 carries and a score, plus the receiving touchdown.
Both two-point conversions on the first two touchdowns failed, but South Side still had a 12-0 lead.
Burgettstown answered on a 72-yard touchdown run by Rudy Brown. The extra point made it 12-7.
Brown was one of the only bright spots for Burgettstown, rushing for 143 yards on seven carries and the score.
“Rudy just has great vision,” Marshall said. “He makes good cuts, he makes the decision and he goes. Fortunately for him, we had some pretty decent o-line play in front of him.”
But South Side’s offense kept clicking, and the Rams got the lead back to two scores on a 7-yard pass from Almashy to Andrew Corfield. The extra point made it 19-7.
Burgettstown responded with a nearly three-minute drive that ended on a 10-yard run by Brodie Kuzior.
A big Blue Devils miscue, however, led to another South Side score.
After Bugettstown stopped South Side on a 4th-and-goal from the 2, a costly fumble by Brown set the Rams up inside the Blue Devils’ 5-yard line, and South Side took advantage on a 1-yard Navarra run.
South Side didn’t take its foot off the gas in the second half, scoring on a 5:55 drive to start the third quarter, capped off by an 11-yard run by Almashy.
Burgettstown drove into the red zone again on its next possession, but South Side’s defense forced a turnover on downs.
The Rams sealed the game on the ensuing possession, with a touchdown pass from Almashy to Clayton Langham.
South Side rushed for 222 yards, went 5-for-8 on third down and didn’t turn the ball over.
Burgettstown rushed for 204 yards but went just 1-for-5 on third down and turned it over twice, both leading to South Side touchdowns.
Things will get even more difficult for Burgettstown next week. The Blue Devils host defending WPIAL Class A champion Bishop Canevin at 7 in its Black Hills Conference opener.
Canevin knocked Burgettstown out of the postseason in the first round of the playoffs last year.
Marshall hopes the South Side Beaver game will help bring the team closer regardless of what happens next week.
“Our biggest thing is we need to use this as a motivation point,” Marshall said, and this needs to bring us together instead of breaking us apart.