FORT WAYNE – Conventional wisdom might have been a little conflicted in Wayne’s 35-34 home win over North Side on Friday. There was North Side just a point away from a tie and more than likely overtime, with all the momentum after rallying from two touchdowns down. But then again, North Side hadn’t done much to stop the Wayne offense in the second half and an extra session might present more of the same. Without hesitation, North Side coach Ryan Hall went for the lead, but Wayne made the big play to slip away with a well-earned, but not so pretty win. “We thought they would,” Wayne coach Scot Shaw said of North Side’s attempt at the two points instead of settling for the 1-point kick. “Me, personally, I would have gone for the tie and played for overtime because they had the momentum going there, too. But like they say, you are on the road and you are on the way back, you might as well try it.” After Arion Nieves’ 15-yard touchdown pass to Jorden Kindig with 27 seconds remaining, North Side trailed 35-34. Hall rolled the dice and went for the 2-point conversion. But Nieves was sacked on the try, and the Generals recovered an onside kick and ran out the remaining 26 seconds. “We didn’t even have any questions about it,” Hall said of the decision to go for two. “We just had to figure out what play to call. Really it was because we weren’t stopping them defensively, so if it goes to overtime you are going to be sitting in the same spot. We needed three yards, and we just didn’t get the ball off.” Nieves hit David Johnson from 16 yards out to cut the lead to 35-28. North Side recovered the onside kickoff and eventually got another score to make it 35-34. It harkened the Generals (4-0, 2-0 SAC) back two weeks ago when they trailed Kokomo by double figures in the second half, only to overcome for a 53-47 road win. “This is the second game we have had like this,” Shaw said. “We didn’t have to come way back here, but it was a different scenario where we had to defend the lead. We have been on both sides of that. We ought to be weathered a little bit.” Senior quarterback Keion Powers paced the Wayne offense with four rushing touchdowns. He ran for 252 yards and passed for 206. “We just didn’t play our best,” Powers said. “You could see it through our whole week of practice; we just weren’t clicking, and it carried over to the game. But we were able to stick it out long enough, so we could get this win over North Side.” After trailing 14-7 at halftime, the Generals scored two touchdowns in the third and two more in the fourth to eventually gain a two-touchdown advantage. “We have learned (from the Kokomo game) that no matter what the deficit is, we can come back,” Powers said. “It also shows how good we can be, so if we are having a bad game like this week we can go into halftime knowing we can come back and we can do this well. It was a tough one, but we pulled it out.” The loss dropped North Side (1-3), the reigning SAC champs, to 0-3 in the league. North Side has lost back-to-back one-point games. Nieves threw for three second-half touchdowns, and Tyson Whitner had two scores in the first half on a 1-yard run and a 70-yard fumble return.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 01:38:45 +0000
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