BW football comes up short against New Albany, 17-6

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

NEW ALBANY — The home-standing Eagles took a big step towards the 2012 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion cham­pi­onship Fri­day night at Eagle Stadium.

New Albany (6–2, 5–0 OCC) posted its fifth straight win with a 17–6 vic­tory over Big Wal­nut (5–3, 3–2 OCC), a win which elim­i­nated both the Golden Eagles and Mount Ver­non (5–3, 3–2), a 21–14 loser to Delaware Hayes, from the title race. Olen­tangy (7–1, 4–1 OCC) remained in the hunt with a 42–0 win over Watkins Memo­r­ial in last night’s action.

Mark Mueller’s Eagles, fol­low­ing a 34-yard return by junior Joe Siegen­thaler on the open­ing kick­off, marched 50 yards in seven plays with with junior Leslie Anokye cap­ping the drive with a 2-yard scor­ing run with 9:10 left in the open­ing period. The touch­down was set by senior quar­ter­back Dar­ron Lee’s 16-yard scam­per to the 4-yard line. Senior Trey Quillin tacked on the extra point.

Joe Weaver’s Golden Eagles, plagued by three dropped passes in the open­ing half, was not able to gen­er­ate any­thing in the first half. New Albany, which con­trolled the ball for 16 min­utes and 32 sec­onds in the half com­pared to Big Walnut’s 7:27, picked up 213 yards and 12 first downs in 37 plays com­pared to the Golden Eagles’ 64 yards and 4 first New Albany took a 10–0 lead into the locker room as Quillin booted a 32-yard field foal with 58.5 sec­onds remain­ing before the half.

“New Albany is a very good foot­ball team that has bal­ance and is deep in tal­ent,” Weaver said. “Out kids did not back down and con­tin­ued to play hard … it came down to the fact that we could not sus­tain any­thing offen­sively when we had the ball.”

Big Wal­nut, seek­ing its fourth straight win, gave its fans a glim­mer of hope, mid­way through the third quar­ter. Senior Cody Con­ley took the kick­off at the Golden Eagle 12 and returned it to the BW 27.

Fol­low­ing a per­sonal foul on New Albany on the return which moved the ball to the BW 42, the Golden Eagles cov­ered the final 58 yards in 12 plays with senior Alex Clark pow­er­ing his way into the end zone from one yard out with 6:06 remain­ing in the third period to cut the Eagles’ lead to 10–6.

Senior quar­ter­back Car­son Chatterton’s 14-yard com­ple­tion to senior tight end Brant Weiss for a first and goal at the one set up Conley’s scor­ing run. Sopho­more Tyler Satterfield’s PAT attempt sailed wide left.

Big Wal­nut, after hold­ing New Albany on downs at the Golden Eagle 28, was unable to mount another scor­ing threat. The Golden Eagles, sparked by sopho­more Chris­t­ian Johnson’s 17-yard run, saw their sec­ond series of the half end in a punt that was downed at the Eagles’ 5-yard line.

Look­ing at a third-and-1 at its own 16 fol­low­ing the punt, New Albany put the ball in the hands of senior Alan Wat­son who broke through the line on his way to an 75-yard scor­ing run and a 17–6 advan­tage with 5:02 to play.

The Golden Eagles saw their slim hopes dis­si­pate on the first play of the ensu­ing series. Hop­ing to catch New Albany off guard, Chat­ter­ton pitched the ball to senior wide receiver Seth Myers on an option play, but Myers’ pass was picked off by Siegen­thaler at the Eagles’ 33 and it was mat­ter of New Albany run­ning out the clock.

New Albany, which has won five of its last six meet­ings with Big Wal­nut, fin­ished with 396 yards and 19 first downs in 64 plays in total offense. The Eagles rushed for 338 yards in 55 plays, led by Wat­son with 155 yards in 16 car­ries. Anokye fol­lowed with 81 yards in 17 car­ries. Lee, who rushed for 77 yards in 13 car­ries, com­pleted 5 of 9 passes for 57 yards.

Big Wal­nut totaled 11 first downs and 156 yards in total offense, rush­ing for 117 yards in 25 car­ries and com­plet­ing 5 of 13 passes for 39 yards. Chat­ter­ton led the Golden Eagles on the ground with 63 yards in 13 car­ries while com­plet­ing 5 of 12 passes for 38 yards.

“Our defense gave us oppor­tu­ni­ties in the sec­ond half, but we were unable to take advan­tage and put points on the board … New Albany’s defense was equal to the chal­lenge” Weaver said. “Our goal is to respond to the loss by com­ing back out and fin­ish­ing strong in our last two reg­u­lar sea­son games of the season.”

Big Wal­nut closes out its home sched­ule Fri­day night with OCC Cap­i­tal Divi­sion rival Olen­tangy Orange before wrap­ping up the reg­u­lar sea­son on the road Fri­day, Octo­ber 26, in OCC action at Franklin Heights.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.