Middletown/Wayne
The ugly..... only about 1000 home fans for this playoff game. A far cry of the 5000 Wayne got under Minton. The fans were pretty hostile as well. Some at each other, others at Wayne coaching and play calling, but mostly at the Middies coaches who were very vocal in the press box.
Wayne would open the scoring on a pick 6 and of course they do some trick play for a 2 point conversion which is actually very successful over the season. It looked like Wayne was going up 15-0 following a punt return but some mystery running into the kicker penalty materialized. Wayne's offense was stagnant. Snap the ball, QB runs around and ends up throwing it away, running for little gain, or running out of bounds for a loss. Would Wayne adjust? No, never did.... never brought in a 2nd back to help protect, never tried a HB screen, so this continued all night and is the reason why Wayne would only end up with 76 yards passing.
The 2nd qtr the Middletown QB got hot throwing and running the ball. Taking advantage of 2 Wayne turnovers Mtown would score 3 TD's in the qtr to put Mtown up 20-11 at the half. The 2nd half Mtown would not be able to do anything...... Wayne had opportunities in the 3rd but could not finish drives. Turnover, missed FG and it remained 20-11 until a late score in the 3rd closed it to a 20-18 score.
4th qtr was more of the same until the Wayne crowd got fed up with the QB running for his life and screams of run the ball started. Someone listened because Wayne started to run it more with both Thompson and Lewis making gains. Lewis would then hit a huge 4th down pass to keep the drive going that would end with a Thompson 7 yard run with 45 seconds left. 2 point conversion good and Wayne wins 26-20.
The officiating in this game was inconsistent and got frustrating at times. Especially when a team that is trailing loses time off the clock because the official keeps the clock running even though the player ran out of bounds without being touched. Late hit called on one team but the other team gets away with 2 to 3 of them that were worse........
Wayne survived but they got to work on protecting the QB..... Defense won the game for Wayne and they will need to come up big against Fairmont next week.