BRADFORD, Pa. (D9Sports) — Clarion’s 2018 football season might be at a crossroad following the Bobcats 34-14 loss at Bradford.
(Photo by Shawn Murray. Check out more of Murray’s work here.)
It wasn’t just that it was Clarion’s second straight loss after starting the season 6-0 or the fact that the Bobcats were dominated on both sides of the football but also the fact that Clarion lost two more key players to injuries that could keep them out of next week’s clash with Brockway and the final regular-season meeting with Clarion-Limestone in two weeks.
“I don’t know what to put my finger on,” Clarion head coach Larry Wiser said of a night that saw his team outgained 303 to 184 — over 100 of those yards came in the final 7:30 with the junior varsity squads in. “I thought we had a good week of practice, but it started from them moving the ball down the field on the first drive. Penalties (Clarion was whistled for 12 infractions) just killed us. We couldn’t get anything going offensively and so forth.”
Surprisingly, Clarion wasn’t able to run the football managing just 34 yards on the ground on the night with Bradford gaining 274 in its run game.
“There was no room to really run the ball,” Wiser said. “Just overall … I’m not questioning my kids’ effort. They gave their best effort. It just seemed we just got caught in the fireworks there today.”
Clarion’s Archer Mills is pressured by Bradford’s Nate Gehm. Mills and the Clarion offense was under pressure all night long from the Bradford defense. Photo by Shawn Murray
Clarion missed Nick Porcello, the senior center on offense and nose guard on defense who was hurt in last week’s loss to Ridgway, but Wiser wasn’t using Porcello’s injury, which will keep him out the rest of the season, as an excuse
“After losing Nick last week I thought we had a good week of practice and had everything in place,” Wiser said. “But then early on we lose our FB/TB (Logan Minich) and our tight end (Drew Whrehn), which changed a lot of things we could do offensively.”
The loss of both leading rusher Minich, to what appears to be another ankle injury, and Whren, to some sort of upper-body injury, means Wiser and his staff might need to rethink some of what it wants to do on offense.
“How do you address that?,” Wiser said. “This is something I haven’t been in very long. We were just talking over there now. I have to give it a lot of thought. I said early on to you in my first interview with you (this season) this is going to have to be a season where I have to think out of the box. And maybe just a whole different thing (on offense) without losing where we have been but at the same time when you don’t have the people in certain places you have to change to your talent and so forth. This is what this may require.”
One positive that came out the game for Clarion was the two late touchdowns by Ethan Burford, who continues his strong sophomore season at receiver. Burford turned in his first 100-yard receiving night of his career when he snagged five passes for 110 yards and two late touchdowns both from fellow sophomore, backup quarterback Calvin German.
Burford caught an 85-yard touchdown pass from German, who hit his teammate in stride around midfield, for Clarion’s first touchdown.
The duo then hooked up again on a 5-yard pass to set the final score.
Wiser said the play of the two sophomores late, German was 3 of 8 passing for 99 yards, was something to take positively out of the game.
“There is no question,” Wiser said. “Earlier in the week we played a JV game and those two connected very well. It was a positive for us tonight.”
Before the two late touchdowns, it was all Bradford led by Owls running back Donnie Pattison, who hit the 100-yard rushing mark for the third straight week and for the sixth time on the year with 16 carries for 103 yards. He was named the Hager Paving Player of the Game and talked about the victory.
Things started strong for Bradford from the beginning when the Owls took the opening kickoff and drove down the field before scoring on a little flip pass from Nuzzo to Derek Sunafrank, who was back in the Owls’ offense for the first time since suffering an injury against Ridgway Sept. 14.
The Owls then took complete control of the game with two touchdowns in the final 6:20 of the first half.
First, Pattison went over the top from the 1-yard line to make it 14-0.
Then, with just 25 seconds left in the half, Nuzzo hit Ambrose with a touchdown pass from 19 yards away to make it 21-0 at the break.
It could have been worse, but late in the first quarter, Clarion’s defense was able to force and recover a fumble to stall a Bradford drive on the Bobcats side of the field.
But all of that was for naught, as Bradford scored twice in the second half to put the game away.
Pattison scored on a 5-yard third-quarter run to make it 28-0, and Ambrose scored on a 4-yard four minutes into the fourth quarter to make it 34-0.
Clarion finishes the regular season with a pair of home games. The Bobcats host Brockway at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19, before hosting Clarion-Limestone in the third annual Black & Blue Brawl at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26.
Bradford plays at Karns City at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19. The Owls have a scheduled game with Oil City at home Friday, Oct. 26, but it looks like that game won’t be played since the Oilers will be in the District 10 playoffs. Bradford should qualify for the District 5-6-9 Class 4A playoffs, which will start the first week of November.
