LOCK HAVEN — Any way you view it, Saturday’s PSAC-East football game between Millersville and Lock Haven was ugly and full of mistakes.
Four interceptions, a lost fumble, missed opportunities and the inability to finish drives by LHU resulted in a 24-6 Millersville win at Hubert Jack Stadium.
In the final stats, the Bald Eagles were flagged 11 times for 103 yards, seven of Millersville’s first downs coming as a result of a LHU penalty.
“You can’t repeatedly drop balls, repeatedly turn it over and repeatedly play awful and expect to win games,” said a frustrated LHU head coach Dave Taynor. “I have to take a step back and take a look at it because I spent a little extra time this week working with our defense just because we struggled as much as we did the week before. I felt we did a good job not turning the ball over the past three weeks against three teams, two of which were in the top five in the country, and then we come out today and turn the ball over five or six times. You simply can’t win a football game when you do that. There was one decision based turnover and the rest were just the result of careless play.”
As for the way his troops played, Taynor accepted full responsibility for the mistakes.
“”I am the head football coach and I own it all,” Taynor said. “What I have to is to get them better prepared to play the game.”
If there was one bright spot on offense it was the receiving efforts of former Bald Eagle Area speedster Brian Greene who caught eight balls for 151 yards. However, Greene was held out of the end zone when he fumbled the ball in the red zone after hauling in a pass from quarterback (Penns Valley) Cameron Tobias.
Tobias completed half of his pass attempts (16-32), but on the down side, he was intercepted four times.
“Four of our turnovers were in the red zone,” said Taynor. “We had an opportunity for a catch and run, the ball bounced off his (LHU receiver’s) face and into the defenders hands. We had the ball down there and when we tried to extend, we lost the ball. The simple fact is that we just played very bad football.”
The tone for the game was pretty much set in the opening period as both teams had the ball flying all over the field in turnover fashion that resulted in a scoreless quarter.
After wasting a couple of opportunities, the Ville got on the board inside of one minute in the second period when Phil Overton went in from one yard out before Joey Farley gave the Marauders a 10-0 lead when he booted a 38-yard field goal with 2:20 left before the break.
Coming out of the locker room the Bald Eagles appeared to have lost some of their composure as the mistakes continued for the Crimson & White.
Taking over on their own 29-yard line, the Marauders began marching down the field, converting four third-down situations along the way en route to a 2-yard scoring pass from Colin Shank to Xavier Jenkins for the touchdown. Farley’s PAT made it 17-0 at the turn for home. The inability to get off the field on third down was once more a thorn in the side of the Bald Eagles as The Ville converted on seven of 14 opportunities.
Late in the third period, the LHU defense stood tall as it blocked a Ville punt. However, as fate would have it for the Bald Eagles, instead of the play resulting in a LHU possession, the punter jumped on the football and advanced it 33 yards past the first down sticks to continue the drive. Again the LHU defensive unit answered the call as they kept the Marauders out of the end zone for the 17-0 MU lead to hold at the turn for home.
With the Bald Eagles offense unable to show any consistency to sustain a drive, the Ville tacked on another touchdown when Kotie Miranda scored on a 1-yard run before Tavian Dorsey scored all of LHU’s points when he made his way for seven yards to paydirt with 2:35 left in the game.
Leading the LHU defense which was on the field for more than 35 of the 60 minutes of the game were Obadiah Asare and Javon Whitfield with a dozen tackles each. Asare had two tackles for loss and one quarterback sack, while Whitfield has a half-sack and 1.5 tackles for loss.
Scoring Summary
2nd 11:19 MILL – Phil Overton 1 yd run (Joey Farley kick ), 9 plays, 80 yards, TOP 4:14 7 0
2nd 02:20 MILL – Joey Farley 38 yd field goal 6 plays, 39 yards, TOP 1:53 10 0
3rd 09:21 MILL – Xavier Jenkins 2 yd pass from Collin Shank (Joey Farley kick ) 12 plays, 71 yards, TOP 5:39 17 0
4th 07:38 MILL – Kobe Miranda 1 yd run (Joey Farley kick ), 5 plays, 19 yards, TOP 1:42 24 0
4th 04:53 LHU – Tavian Dorsey 7 yd run (Cameron Tobias pass failed), 6 plays, 39 yards, TOP 2:35 24 6
