BUTLER TWP — Butler pulled the surprise early in the first half. Shaler pulled out its power late.

The Titans scored two touchdowns in the final two minutes of the first half, breaking open a close game and keying a 34-6 Northern Seven Conference football victory over the Golden Tornado Friday night at Art Bernardi Stadium.

“We came out in a spread and had chances to make some plays early,” Butler coach Clyde Conti said. “We just didn't make them.”

The Tornado (2-3, 0-3) opened the game with a successful onsides kick, followed by an 11-yard completion to Jake Hays to move to the Shaler 38-yard line. From there, they had to punt.

Butler didn't get inside Shaler's 35 until it put together a scoring drive in the game's waning moments.

“We practice against the onsides kick every day, but they executed it perfectly,” Shaler coach Neil Gordon said. “They did a few things we didn't expect early in this game and it took us a while to get going.”

The game was scoreless early in the second quarter when the Titans' J.P. Holtz was stopped short of the sticks by Jakob Como on a fourth-down carry at the Butler 4-yard line.

Moments later, Butler was penalized for an illegal substitution on third-and-1 from its own 13. Two plays after that, a Tornado punt was shanked out of bounds at the 20.

Holtz scored on a 20-yard run and Shaler (4-1, 2-0) had a 7-0 lead with 8:55 left in the half.

Holtz added a 1-yard scoring run to cap a 10-play, 77-yard drive with 1:55 left in the half. Two plays later, Butler lost a fumble at its own 30, setting up Ryan Mincher's 15-yard touchdown pass to Nick Piett with 31 seconds left on the clock.

The Titans went into halftime with a sudden 20-0 lead.

“We have to stop putting the ball on the ground like that,” Conti said. “It's happening too much.”

Shaler added a pair of scores in the third quarter. A Niko Thorpe 2-yard run capped a six-play, 61-yard drive and a 29-yard interception return by Sean Miller set up Mincher's 8-yard TD pass to Sean Gavin.

Thorpe paced the Shaler ground game with 17 carries for 95 yards. Mincher completed 11 of 16 passes for 152 yards and two scores.

“He means everything to us,” Gordon said. “Ryan is such a heady player. A lot of the calls out there were his. He'd check out of this, check into that. We trust what he sees.”

Butler used three quarterbacks on the night, its biggest playing being a 49-yard pass from Tom Jendesky to Jake Olenick early in the final quarter.

Cody Preston scored the Tornado touchdown on a 12-yard run, capping a 47-yard drive with 2:31 remaining.

“That was JV's vs. JV's and we blocked everybody wrong on that play,” Conti said.

Nine different players rushed the ball for the Tornado, who managed only 65 yards on the ground.

“We're still looking around, trying to figure out who our best players are,” Conti said. “We did some good things tonight. We just don't match up with some of these teams.”

“Butler came after us, attacked and hit hard,” Gordon said. “I thought they played pretty well. Their defense jumped our running schemes early and we had to change some things up.

“It took us a while to figure that team out.”

Butler travels to North Hills on Friday.