CB
WEST'S STREAK ENDS AT 55
By Mike Kern, Daily News Sports Writer
Through 55 consecutive games, the football team from Central
Bucks West High School always managed to find a way to avoid defeat. Some of those ways
even bordered on the miraculous.
There was the Abington game in 1986, when the Bucks, minus two key
players, won on the road, 14-0. It was Abington's only loss that season.
There was the Abington game the following year. The Bucks trailed by
four points in the fourth quarter, and star Randy Cuthbert had gone out with an injury.
But his replacement, Shawn Moylan, directed the go-ahead scoring drive and intercepted a
pass to set up a clinching touchdown.
And in this year's opener at Plymouth-Whitemarsh, CB West trailed by
two with under a minute to go and no timeouts remaining. But P-W fumbled while attempting
to run out the clock, the Bucks recovered and Chris Warren kicked a 28-yard field goal
with just two seconds to go.
Yes, it certainly was one heck of a storybook run. But alas, it's over.
And so is their shot at history.
Last night at Doylestown's War Memorial Stadium, Cardinal O'Hara
stunned the Bucks, 13-10, and kept them from equaling the state unbeaten streak record of
56 set by Braddock between 1953 and '60.
"I figured we'd run out of things sooner or later," said
Bucks coach Mike Pettine, who was denied his 200th victory and suffered only the 31st loss
(he has four ties) of his 23-year career.
What Pettine couldn't have figured was that it would be the other team
making all the right moves when it counted most. After all, it had not happened for more
than five years.
But last night, it did. Cardinal O'Hara came back from a 10-0 halftime
deficit and won it when Fred Steigerwalt scored on a leaping catch of a 22- yard pass from
Kevin Byrne with 2:37 remaining.
"We weren't out to break any streaks," said O'Hara coach Bob
Ewing, who addressed the West squad on the field afterward. "We don't get anything
out of that. For us, this is like playing Notre Dame. I told them I didn't care if we lost
the game. As long as we played hard, I'd take it. I was honest with them, and they
responded."
The game, originally scheduled for last Saturday at Springfield (Delco)
but pushed back because of heavy rains, was not without its ironic twists. A year ago on
this same field, West had beaten Cardinal O'Hara, 28-6. And the O'Hara team that played so
tenaciously last night was the same one that had opened last week with a somewhat
surprising 27-14 loss at West Chester East.
But perhaps the strangest twist of all was the way CB West played. The
Bucks lost four fumbles, two inside the O'Hara 10. Uncharacteristically, the Bucks also
were penalized 10 times for 68 yards. Several of those penalties came at critical
junctures.
"We looked like it was the first day of camp," said Pettine,
whose team had held the nation's longest current scholastic unbeaten streak. "But
O'Hara's a class team, and they had to make the plays to beat us. There are some people on
our schedule who would've been finger-pointing and taunting us at the end, but to O'Hara's
credit, they let us have our defeat in dignity. For that, I take my hat off to their kids
and coaches. I also thought it was nice the way a lot of people applauded at the end and
as we went through the gate (heading off the field and into the locker room). It's
something that when I'm in a rocking chair, I'll be able to sit back and really
appreciate.
But surely not at the moment. The Bucks, who had 11 more first downs
than O'Hara, scored the first time they touched the ball. They moved 60 yards in eight
plays, with Thad Brennan's 3-yard run producing the touchdown. Warren's 37-yard field goal
in the second quarter made it 10-0, and it appeared at that point that West had things
pretty much under control.
But Bucks quarterback George "Puddy" Gilbert fumbled the
second-half kickoff. Four plays later, O'Hara scored off a fake field goal attempt, when
Byrne, the holder, lateraled to Jack Clark, who had lined up as the kicker. Clark rolled
right and threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Jeff Toal, who was behind the secondary.
O'Hara failed on a two-point conversion run and it was 10-6.
It stayed that way until well into the fourth quarter. Then, O'Hara's
Brian McNulty hit Gilbert as the Bucks' quarterback was setting up to pass on a
third-and-long from the O'Hara 38, and John Atkinson, the son of former NFL linebacker Al
Atkinson, recovered the ensuing fumble at the Lions' 43 with 5:02 to go.
From there, it took O'Hara 10 plays to reach the end zone. The big play
in the drive was a 14-yard pass from Byrne to Steigerwalt on fourth-and-11 from the West
48 that was threaded between two defenders. If the Bucks had held at that point, their
streak probably would be alive. But as it turned out, Byrne lofted a pass toward the right
corner four plays later, Steigerwalt outjumped Brian Connelly and came down in a heap on
the goal line. The subsequent extra point by Ryan Cahill ensured that West could not pull
this one out with just another field goal.
But the Bucks weren't through quite yet, even though Gilbert was
injured running back the ensuing kickoff to the West 40. After backup quarterback Andy
Kelso completed a 10-yard, fourth-down pass to Connelly that moved the chains, Gilbert
returned. And he threw one about as far as he could down the sideline, where 5-7,
120-pound sophomore Matt Soncini somehow wrestled the ball away from a pair of defenders
at the O'Hara 27, with 20 seconds left. But the play was nullified by a holding call.
Following an incompletion, Connelly hauled down a desperation bomb at the O'Hara 39 as
time expired.
"We would have had, what, maybe three chances to throw it in the
end zone, and who knows?" said Pettine, who added that he would not have gone for a
field goal that could have extended the streak.
"We really have no excuses," said Brennan, a senior.
"O'Hara came out in the second half like a team possessed. Against P-W, the effort
wasn't there. But we all had our hearts in this one. You've got to give credit where it's
due. Everyone at halftime was saying, 'No letdowns, no letdowns.' I don't know what
happened.
" . . . If we let this drag us down, we'll have a 1-10 season. I
don't think there's any quit in this club. I guess we'll find out Friday (at home against
Neshaminy). It's up to us to improve on the negatives, and emphasize the positives. That's
the only way to improve. It's like we're starting over at 0-0-0."
Pettine was just as concerned about what the future might hold for his
team.
"It (the loss) makes you understand what it takes to win and not
to just take it for granted," Pettine said. "If the pressure bothered us, it
shouldn't be there anymore. It's not a league game, so we can still have a hell of a
season. The test of this team is not so much tonight, but how they're going to come back
from it. It'll be interesting to see what kind of character we have. I'm sure Neshaminy
must feel they can beat us, 40-0. The sting of this loss is going to be there as long as
we keep losing.
You don't want it to become a habit. When I was just starting out here,
we won 15 straight. Then we lost, and the air went out of our balloon and we lost four of
the next five.
"We had some key people out, or playing hurt, but that's part of
the game. This team doesn't seem to have, I don't know, the intangibles, or maybe the
talent, to make up for that like we have in the past. I knew this team was going to have
it tougher than any other, because the lottery prize kept going up, and people became more
crazed with an all-out effort to beat us. I'll be anxious to see how this team responds.
Maybe they're convinced that you have to fight emotion with emotion. We haven't done that
yet.
"This team has that cross to bear," Pettine said, "and
it's unfortunate. We could win the rest of our games, and they will still be looked upon
as the team that blew it. That's the price they had to pay. But we've taken everyone's
best shot, and risen to the occasion before."
The implication was clear. Even though the Bucks finally have been
stopped, there figures to be more where all the glories of the past came from. |