Beaten on own turf
BUTLER TWP — Butler scored the first points on the new artificial turf Friday night at Art Bernardi Stadium.
After that? Not so good.
Penn Hills rolled up 466 yards in total offense — 337 on the ground — in posting a 42-21 football triumph over the Golden Tornado.
The Big Red (1-2) scored four straight touchdowns after Butler's opening score and won big despite losing four fumbles and suffering 90 yards in penalties.
"We needed to break out and win a game. Definitely, our team needed this,"Penn Hills coach Ron Graham.
The first points of the game were set up by the Big Red's first mistake. Chris Darby muffed a punt and the Tornado's Zach Harrison fell on the ball at the Penn Hills 23-yard line.
Five plays later, Tony Fudoli scored on a 1-yard run and Butler (2-1) had the lead.
"They had been turning the ball over like that. We saw that on film,"Butler coach Jeff McAnallen said. "We wanted to take advantage of some of those mistakes, and we did.
"We just didn't make enough plays tonight to win."
Penn Hills took a 14-7 lead into halftime in spite of itself. Dontae Brown caught a 42-yard touchdown pass to pull the visitors even and Christopher Washington returned a punt 47 yards to the Tornado 5, setting up the go-ahead score.
The lead would have been larger at intermission, but Darby lost a fumble at the Tornado 16-yard line late in the first quarter and Teddy Blakeman coughed up the ball at Butler's 31 late in the first half.
Both running backs more than made up for the miscues.
Blakeman had 20 carries for 193 yards and a touchdown while Darby had four carries for 131 yards and three TDs.
"We were trying to do a lot of blitzing and stunting, but they broke some big ones over and over again,"McAnallen said.
Darby scored on a 44-yard run to end the first possession of the third quarter. Blakeman scored on a 17-yard jaunt on Penn Hills' next possession as the Big Red opened up 28-7 lead with 5:31 left in the third quarter.
Quarterback Tom Fulton connected with Brandon Ilfill for a 38-yard pass before Blakeman's score.Darby added touchdown runs of 40 and 35 yards later in the game.Two bizarre plays helped Butler score a pair of third-quarter touchdowns. The Tornado's Christos Klutinoty caught a screen pass from Cole Harvey with just over five minutes left in the period — Butler's first pass of the game — and rambled for a 20-yard gain.Klutinoty was stripped of the football near the end of the play, the ball squirting forward 10 yards. Teammate Nathan Neff scooped it up and ran 35 yards for a touchdown.Later in the quarter, Blakely tried securing a rolling punt in traffic and couldn't get a handle on it. Eli Christy covered the loose ball for Butler at the Penn Hills 17.On fourth-and-6, Harvey found an uncovered Jared Oesterling for the touchdown."Yeah, we had some turnovers, but Butler has a pretty good team,"Graham said. "Their kids kept playing hard and they caused a lot of that stuff."Butler managed only 105 yards of offense and Harvey was sacked six times. Harvey left the game briefly after getting drilled to the turf early in the second period. He suffered a gash just above his left eye."It was nasty, like a boxer getting cut,"McAnallen said. "We had him checked out and he was OK."Harvey missed only one offensive series before returning.T.J. Lesniewski had two fumble recoveries for Butler. The Tornado punted eight times. Penn Hills didn't punt until late in the fourth quarter.Defensive back-kick returner Josh Reddick did not play in the second half because of a back injury."This was a physical game and we got a little banged up,"McAnallen said. "That's a top-five Quad-A team we played tonight. That's the caliber of opponent we want to face and the caliber of football we want to play."
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