Upper St. Clair, Pa. – If the saying to define a turnaround after a bad loss in football is “what a difference a week makes” Pittsburgh Central Catholic didn’t get that memo. Just four days after a less than stellar performance vs. Mt. Lebanon in the 36-7 loss last Saturday, Central Catholic returned to the football field for a Thursday night battle against what many would think to be a much tougher test then the Blue Devils in Upper St. Clair. However, the Vikings were more than happy to entertain the FSN viewers lighting up the score board time and time again, and shutting down the high powered Panthers offense that put up 23 points in a win over North Allegheny last week.
It didn’t look good for Jim Renders Panthers from the first snap of the ball, which was fumbled and recovered by Central Catholic. The Vikings would get their first points of the night off of that turnover on a Matt Mac Zura 31-yard field goal, giving them a 3-0 at the end of one quarter.
WPIAL leading rusher Damon Jones-More kept things going in the second on a 4-yard run that widened the Vikings lead to two scores.
While Central Catholic only attempted 7 pass the entire game, one of the four quarterback David Symers completed went for a 26-yard touchdown too Dustin Lowman.
The Vikings would strike again, once again coming via the feet of Jones-More this time from 38-yards out.
The Panthers would put a drive together right before the half and score with just 39 seconds left, when quarterback Alex Park (9 of 21 for 110 yards) found Mitchell Fawcett for an 8-yard TD strike. However that would be the only USC score of the ball game.
Going into the break, Central had a 24-7 lead. That would only increase by one score at the 11:00 min mark of the final quarter when Jones-More (32 for 199 yards and 3 TD’s) ran in his third of the night from 15 yards out.
The Viking defense was just as impressive as the offense; hold the Panthers to just one third down conversion of their 12 attempts, another key tonight’s win was USC only had 163 total yards with the football compared to 353 for Central Catholic.
The much needed turn around win for Pittsburgh Central Catholic (3-1), only makes this epic 2009 season even more interesting than before, not to mention the fact this victory has to answer some questions as to exactly how good is PCC in ’09. For Upper St. Clair (3-1), they lost to a good football program, and even with the loss they are still a team to be recon with.
It was said last week, but maybe it should be restated for the record; the Highway to Heinz in Quad-“A” is a jammed as any highway leading into the city of Pittsburgh this weekend for the G20. This isn’t your average rush hour traffic and unlike the traffic you will see this weekend, for the teams wanting a spot at Heinz…there isn’t roadside assistance.
