Wall of Warriors
CHERRY TWP — One of the trademarks of Western Pennsylvania football is solid defense.
Moniteau kept that tradition alive and well on Friday night by holding A-C Valley to 35 yards of offense on the way to a 35-0 victory.
"We are a defensive team and we say that every year," said Moniteau coach Steve Wilson. "Our kids would rather pitch a shutout than score 40 points. That is just the mentality we have."
Moniteau opened the scoring on its first offensive possession when Adam Cousins broke through the left side of the A-C Valley defense and raced 19 yards to the end zone.
Cousins had fumbled the ball at the line of scrimmage, but was able to recover it and advance down the field.
The Warriors were set up with good field position on the drive when Cousins returned the opening kickoff to the A-C Valley 44-yard line.
On the ensuing possession, the Falcons were forced to punt from their own 15-yard line.
Cousins fielded the punt at the A-C Valley 41 and raced into the end zone to give Moniteau a 13-0 advantage with 8:55 left in the opening quarter.
At the 5:59 mark, Moniteau added to the lead when quarterback Tyler Armagost threw a screen pass to Tyler Mauthe at midfield. Mauthe cruised through the Falcon defense for 50 yards and the score.
Armagost, filling in for quarterback Josh Loos, who missed the game due to illness, completed 10 of 13 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns.
"Tyler has so much poise in the pocket it's unbelievable," said Wilson. "He's only a sophomore, so he definitely has a bright future here."
Things got worse for A-C Valley on the next play when up-back Cody Anthony mishandled the Moniteau kickoff and the Warriors' Ricky Best jumped on the ball at the A-C Valley 29-yard line.
Three plays later, the Warriors capitalized on the turnover when Armagost threw a 17-yard scoring strike to Adam Pry.
The score gave Moniteau a 27-0 advantage at the end of the first quarter.
One area where Moniteau was not proficient Friday night was penalties, as the Warriors were 17 flagged for 155 yards.
"We can't have the sloppy penalties, and we can't have the 15-yard penalties," said Wilson. "We pride ourselves on being a class program, and we just can't have those kinds of penalties."
The lone bright spot for the Falcons was the running of senior Cody Anthony, who rushed for 23 yards on 11 carries.
A-C Valley quarterback Brad Rembold completed only three of 12 passes for 29 yards.
"We go over things, and I think the kids have got it, and then we get into the game and it just falls apart," said A-C Valley coach Randy Lemmon. "We have a lot of players who haven't played before or they played for a year and came back, but for some reason they get into a game and get a deer-in-the- headlights look."
