FOOTBALL: Another second-half rally lifts Point Pleasant Beach over Bound Brook in CJI semifinals

BOUND BROOK - Perhaps the Point Pleasant Beach High School football team should come with a warning to Mid-State 37 Central Group I teams: "First-half performance no guarantee of future results."

The Gulls followed a familiar blueprint for the second straight week in the NJSIAA playoffs, looking flat in the first half to fall behind on the road by two touchdowns, only to come roaring out after intermission and getting it done with the pressure on.

After flipping the script on second-seeded Manville in the first round to rebound from a 14-point halftime deficit, seventh-seeded Point Beach gave the Mustangs’ chief rivals the same treatment Friday night. Senior quarterback Luke Frauenheim threw touchdown passes of 53 and 79 yards, respectively, in the third quarter, and the Gulls defense pitched a second-half shutout for the second straight week, rallying from a 12-point deficit and topping third-seeded Bound Brook, 22-19, at Lamont Field.

“We’ve just got a lot of fight in us,” said Frauenheim, whose club will face fourth-seeded Middlesex for the championship in two weeks, likely at Kean University. “Us seniors, we weren’t going out on a loss. We want to keep playing, and we’ve got one more now. We just came out in the second half and said we’ve been here before. We’ve come back four times from being down multiple scores (this year) and we get it done. I don’t know. We’re a second-half team.”

“Certainly not the way I expected it to end,” said Bound Brook coach Dom Longo said, whose team is denied its first finals berth since 1978, finishing 8-3 for the second-straight season, the first time the Crusaders have won eight or more games in consecutive years since 1971-72. “I think they beat us at our own game. They were a little more physical than I thought they’d be against us, and we made key mistakes that cost us the game.”

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Up 19-7 at halftime, Bound Brook got the ball first after the break, but, like Manville last weekend, couldn’t build on the momentum. The Crusaders went 3-and-out, and, again, like last week, Point Beach was ready, as Frauenheim hit Josh Yates with a 53-yard touchdown bomb on the fourth play of the ensuing drive, before John Nista ran in the 2-point conversion to pull the Gulls to within 19-15.

But instead of retorting, Bound Brook committed the first of several key miscues in the second half, fumbling the ball away on the first play of the ensuing drive. But the Crusaders defense stepped up, forcing Point Beach to go 3-and-out, and Bound Brook and had a chance to swing the momentum back in its favor.

And it looked like that’s exactly what the Crusaders would do, as Mason Horsburgh broke a run from Bound Brook’s own 46-yard line that ended in the end zone for what looked like a touchdown. But the Crusaders were whistled for a personal-foul penalty at the 5-yard line, a needless infraction committed after Horsburgh had already crossed the goal line, giving Bound Brook 1st-and-10 from the 20 instead of six points. But that’s when the final momentum shift gave the Gulls the push they needed, as they recovered a fumble three plays later, before Frauenheim connected with Jean Verrier on a 79-yard touchdown heave and Jeff Wall added the extra point to make it 22-19 with 2:24 left in the third quarter. Neither team would score again.

“Whoever wins the turnover battle usually wins,” Frauenheim said. “You force turnovers, you want to take a shot right away and get up big on them, and that’s what we did. We took the momentum right back and ran with it.”

“It certainly would have been nice to be up with that touchdown, although I certainly didn’t think they were going to quit, by any means,” Longo said. “But to take a touchdown off the board is a little bit of a deflator, there’s no doubt about it.”

Point Beach got the scoring started on the game’s first drive, as Nista capped a 12-play, 76-yard drive with a one-yard scoring run, followed by a Wall kick. Bound Brook responded immediately, getting a 33-yard run by David Vicuna to set up Ahmad Campbell on a two-yard touchdown scamper, before the Crusaders missed the extra-point attempt, making it 7-6 Point Beach.

Bound Brook scored again with 4:02 remaining in the second quarter, as Campbell rewarded a 22-yard run by Horsburgh by finishing the drive with another two-yard touchdown run, before Kenny Reyes connected on the PAT to make it 13-7 Crusaders.

After Point Beach’s ensuring drive stalled on downs near mid field with 40 seconds left, the Crusaders cashed in, getting a 40-yard run from Horsburgh and a six-yard touchdown pass from David LePoidevin to Nigel Wilson with 14.7 seconds left in the half. A pass attempt on a 2-point try failed, making it 19-7 at the break.

“We talked about it at halftime, we saw the Manville game and knew what to expect that they were going to come out and be physical and the game wasn’t over,” Longo said. “We had our opportunities, they kicked to us to start the half, and we didn’t execute.”

Simeon Pincus can be reached at SPincus@GannettNJ.com. Follow him on Twitter @SimeonPincus and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SimeonPincusCN

POINT PLEASANT BEACH (7-4) 7-0-15-0 -- 22
BOUND BROOK (8-3) 6-13-0-0 – 19
SCORING PLAYS:
PPB – Nista 1 run (Wall kick)
BB – Campbell 2 run (kick failed)
BB – Campbell 2 run (Reyes kick)
BB – Wilson 6 pass from D. LePoidevin (pass failed)
PPB – Yates 53 pass from Frauenheim (Nista run)
PPB – Verrier 79 pass from Frauenheim (Wall kick)
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS:
RUSHING: PPB—Webber 13-39, Frauenheim 11-43, Nista 9-27, Parry 2-1; BB—Ejiogu 6-17, Horsburgh 11-81, Campbell 9-19, Vicuna 3-37.
PASSING: PPB—Frauenheim 4-13-2-0-136; BB—D. LePoidevin 6-8-1-0-24.
RECEIVING: PPB—Yates 2-87, Verrier 1-79, Nista 1-8; BB—J. LePoidevin 3-15, Wilson 2-9, Horsburgh 1-0.