FOOTBALL: Hunterdon Central overcomes late rally, edges Franklin in overtime

RARITAN TOWNSHIP - The Hunterdon Central High School football team is still trying to find itself. The Red Devils are a young club with a new head coach playing in a brutally tough conference, and it’s no surprise Central has taken some lumps.

The Red Devils certainly experienced that the first two weeks of season, dropping games to powerhouses Bridgewater-Raritan and Phillipsburg, despite showing plenty of positives. After finally getting into the win column last weekend against struggling Montgomery, the Red Devils were faced with a huge test at home Thursday against up-and-coming Franklin, and although it was momentarily stunned by a late-game rally, Central proved it has anything but a glass jaw.

Hunterdon Central shook off being shutout during the second half, as well as Franklin’s game-tying rally late in the fourth-quarter that forced overtime, as quarterback Clayton Lancaster hit sophomore receiver Braden Holles with a 25-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the extra session – the signal-caller's third scoring throw of the contest and the receiver’s first varsity end zone visit – and the Red Devils defense did the rest, securing a 27-20 victory at Stewart Field.

“That’s been the M.O. of this football team; we’ve taken a lot of punches,” said Hunterdon Central coach Casey Ransone, whose team improved to 2-2. “It’s a young football team and they fight back, and that’s what I’m proud of. But we’ve got to do a better job. We had (some) wide-open opportunities to make plays and we didn’t get it done. And that’s something that we’ve got to clean up as a football team, and we will. But, at the end of the day, when we had to make a play, we made a play.”

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Call it sticking to its guns or just a stubborn refusal to surrender, the game-winning play was something Central had tried in each of its first two games and without success. But as they won the overtime coin toss and elected to receive, the Red Devils knew exactly where they were going as they lined up on the Franklin 25-yard line.

“We knew right away if we got the ball, it’s our trick play,” Lancaster said. “We tried to do it against Bridgewater and tried to do it against Phillipsburg, so we’re 0-for-2. But we bring it back here. We know that they’re going man (defense) inside the 25, and we have speed with Holles coming in, we know he’s coming across and will be wide open. So all I had to do was just sell the sprint left and it was a throwback (screen) and he did the rest.

“It just says we never stop fighting and no play is out of our playbook, just because it doesn’t work once or twice. We always believe in the play and we never gave up.”

“I’m proud of where we are as a football team,” Ransone said. “One thing I’m seeing every week is a toughness about this team that I like. A progression. I’m proud that we’re 2-2. As a player and coach, you never apologize for a win. It’s tough to win a football game in this league, it really is, and our kids have fought back from 0-2 against two good team. It’s going to be a battle for us every week and we know that. And the kids embrace it.”

Of course, there was still the matter of stopping Franklin’s overtime chance, and the Hunterdon Central defense took care of that, just as it did for most of the game and most of the season when the offense had trouble finding a groove. The Warriors got as close as the 10-yard line in overtime, as Tykey Reinberry – filling in at quarterback after starter Tony Scott went down injured on the third play of the game – completed an eight-yard pass on first down, and ran the ball three times to give his team 1st-and-10 at the 12. But the Central defense put an end to any further advance to secure the victory.

The Red Devils defense also made a big play at the end of regulation to halt Franklin’s would-be game-winning charge when Jacob Stetson picked off a pass on his team’s side of the field with 49 seconds remaining in regulation.

“The defense has come up big all year of for us,” said Lancaster, who watched the unit hold Franklin to 169 yards from scrimmage, including just 33 in the first half. “The offense has to get it done and there’s definitely times where the defense bails us out. They bailed us out on those last two possessions. We didn’t get it done in the two-minute (at the end of regulation), so we just threw our defense out there and said, c’mon, make a stop for us. And our defense came up big for us and we’re thankful.”

“That’s what they’ve done for us all year,” said Ransone, whose team held Franklin’s top playmaker, Reinberry, pretty much in check, although he did finish with 129 yards rushing, though 50 came on one play and 26 on another. “We’ve got a young offensive line and, at times, we’ve out the defense in some bad positions, and they’ve always stepped up. There’s some good senior leadership from our linebackers there, with Jack Kovi, just like last week, again this week he stepped up when we needed him to and provided us leadership. And we had a couple of injuries that put a sophomore (Stetson) on the field at safety and he made some plays when we needed him to.”

Franklin looked dead in the water at halftime, trailing 20-7. Central had opened the scoring with a four-yard Lancaster-to-Luke Bakerin touchdown pass on its first drive of the contest, extending the advantage to 10-7 after the first of two 42-yard field goals Logan Matthew booted Friday night. The Warriors cut their deficit to 10-7 with 8:03 left in the first half on an interception returned for a touchdown by Clayborne Fields III – one of three picks Franklin tallied Friday – but a nine-yard Lancaster-to-Bakerin scoring toss and another Matthews field goal made it 20-7 at intermission.

Franklin (1-3) adjusted well in the second half, holding Hunterdon Central to 131 total yards, as the Red Devils made some mistakes on offense, squandering opportunities. The Warriors, meanwhile, a team that has not won more than two games in any season in five years, including a 1-9 campaign a year ago, showed they’re not planning to lay down for anyone.

Reinberry closed the gap to 20-13, breaking off a 50-yard scoring run with 1:13 left in the third quarter, and after Central missed a 36-yard field goal on its ensuing drive, and then the teams exchanged 3-and-outs, the Warriors marched down for the tying score.

Fields’ second interception of the game gave Franklin the ball at the Central 31-yard line, and after Reinberry showed what makes him one of the area’s most dangerous playmakers by escaping several would-be sacks scrambling around the backfield, the senior broke loose for a 26-yard gain on 2nd-and-18, giving his team 1st-and-goal at the 1-yard line. It looked as if Central’s defense might escape, but Brandon Myers ran it in on third down from two yards out and Asare Bampoe-Parry added the extra point to tie it.

“These guys are fighters, but we still have to learn how to finish,” Franklin first-year coach John Paczkowski said. “They (Central) are well-coached, they’re a very good ball club, and we had opportunities. We don’t want to play the ‘woulda, coulda shoulda’ game, but anytime you go to overtime it could go either way.”

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

FRANKLIN (1-3) 0-7-6-7-0 -- 20
HUNTERDON CENTRAL (2-2) 7-13-0-0-7 -- 27
SCORING PLAYS:
HC – Bakerian 4 pass from Lancaster (Matthews kick)
HC – Matthews 42 FG
F – Fields INT return (Bampoe-Parry kick)
HC – Bakerian 9 pass from Lancaster (Matthews kick)
HC – Matthews 42 FG
F – Reinberry 50 run (kick failed)
F – Myers 2 run (Bampoe Parry kick)
HC – Holles 25 pass from Lancaster (Matthews kick)
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS:
RUSHING: F—Reinberry 21-129, Scott 4-0, Merricks 5-16, Cruz 1-1, Myers 1-2; HC—Kovi 12-70, Lancaster 7-54, Bryant 9-69, #24 3-1, Mordeci 1-2, Holles 1-6.
PASSING: F—Reinberry 7-12-0-2-31, Scott 0-3-0-0-0; HC—Lancaster 6-19-3-3-76.
RECEIVING: F—Fields 1-1, Badru 4-23, Merricks 2-7; HC—Kenyon 2-19, Bakerian 2-13, Holles 1-25, Aimone 1-21.