This is the last in a series of 10 articles profiling the 2017 inductees into the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame.BUTLER TWP — The players walked out to receive the WPIAL championship trophy — but didn’t feel like champions.“They had the saddest look in their eyes. They felt like they lost,” former Butler High School football coach Art Bernardi said of his 1977 WPIAL co-championship team.That team was anything but losers.The Golden Tornado put together a 9-0-2 record that year — Butler’s first unbeaten season in 12 years — and tied heavily-favored Penn Hills 7-7 in a bizarre WPIAL championship game.For those efforts, the 1977 Butler football team will be inducted into the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame during the organization’s 52nd annual banquet Saturday night at the Butler Days Inn.“We were probably three-touchdown underdogs entering that game,” former Butler assistant coach Ed Codi said. “I mean, Penn Hills had Bill Fralic and a bunch of other eventual Division I athletes on their team.“Nobody was giving us a chance to beat them.”Yet Butler had a 7-0 lead over the Indians with 2:24 left in the third quarter when a transformer blew and the lights went out on that Friday night at Mt. Lebanon’s stadium. John Minehart had scored the Tornado touchdown on a 9-yard run in the first quarter.Penn Hills was having trouble moving the football.“We were shutting them out and that Penn Hills team probably averaged 35 points a game, maybe more, that year,” Codi said. “For us to be shutting them out was pretty incredible.“They couldn’t figure out our scheme. They couldn’t move the ball. If that game gets finished that night, there’s no way we lose.”Bernardi agreed.And Bernardi was shocked when WPIAL officials informed him the teams would have to return and finish the game the following night.“There’s no question we win if those lights don’t go out,” Bernardi said. “That game should have been declared over right there. It was crazy, the decision we had to come back. The National Federation of High Schools never wanted a football team to play twice in a week, let alone twice in two days.”Penn Hills dominated play the next night. Butler managed just one first down and the Indians tied the game on a 1-yard run by Joel Coles in the fourth quartyer. Coles, who eventually joined Butler linebacker Roger Puz at Penn State, had 36 carries for 151 yards in the game.Penn Hills actually had a chance to win the game late — driving to the Tornado 16-yard line — but John McCue sacked the quarterback in the waning seconds and time expired.Puz was Butler’s eventual Division I football player and “Penn Hills had four Division I guys along its offensive line alone,” Bernardi said.“Roger did a great job of adjusting our defensive calls Friday. We were plugging the gaps. They (Penn Hills) came back out Saturday, ran a power I and just ran over us,” he added. “There was a gentleman’s agreement between the teams not to look at films from Friday before we finished Saturday ... but I don’t know.”Butler was 9-0-1 in the regular season in 1977 — tying New Castle 7-7 — and defeated Bethel Park 14-0 and Fox Chapel 7-6 in the playoffs to reach the title game.The Bethel Park game was scoreless until Tom McPherson capped a 20-play, 80-yard drive with a 1-yard plunge with 6:22 to play. Greg Gillespie recovered a fumble at the Bethel Park 35 later on and quarterback Ed Hartman scored on a 17-yard run.McPherson’s 25-yard TD run and John Voelker’s PAT were the difference in the Fox Chapel game.“Tom McPherson was one of the toughest running backs we ever had,” Bernardi said. “Unlike our big, powerful teams from the 1963-65, that 1977 team was physically small. We looked like a junior high team.“But those guys played with heart, with guts. And they were so smart. They deserve this honor. They are one of the best Butler football teams of all-time.”Codi said Butlers defensibe line averaged maybe 180 pounds “and we stopped people.”Other returning veterans that season — who also played key roles on the 1976 Butler team that reached the WPIAL finals — included running backs Tom Frost, Kevin O’Donnell and Pete Severino, center Voelker, guard Dan Vissari, defensive ends Gillespie and Kevin Morrow, safety John McCarthy, corners Bob Kromer and Jim Campbell, defensive tackle Joe Owens, tackle Randy Cypher and linebacker Rob Baxter.Tickets for the April 29 HOF banquet are $35 in advance, $40 at the door. Ticket outlets include Parkers Appliance in Chicora, Bill’s Beer Barn, Moses Jewelers and Snack-N-Pack in Butler, Saxonburg Drug and Maddalon Jewelers in Zelienople.