Big Red Starts Fast And Rolls Through First Round
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STEUBENVILLE -- The bye week did not slow down Big Red.
After the well-earned week off during the first week of the playoffs, Steubenville needed just three plays to find the end zone in its playoff opener Friday night and rolled from there.
Big Red scored on each of its first three drives against Jackson in the Division III, Region 11 quarterfinals on the way to a 47-17 victory inside Harding Stadium.
Big Red, the top seed in the region, improves to 9-2 on the season and will advance to regional semifinals, also at home next Friday.
"We got off to a good start," Big Red head coach Reno Saccoccia said. "We needed a fast start, I was worried about that after the bye week, but we got off to a good start and played good football from there."
James Turner scored the first two Steubenville touchdowns, while Colton Henderson ran for the next two Steubenville scores, Santino Haney threw a touchdown pass to Kaiden Anderson and Karson Simmons and By'Seir Luke each also added a rushing score in the contest.
"I'm really happy for our players," Saccoccia said. "We've battled through adversity this year, we've overcome that and now its another season and we started it well."
After getting the ball first, Henderson broke two big runs on the first two plays of the game, the second just coming short of the goal line. Turner then plunged across for a 7-0 lead on just the third snap of the game just over a minute in.
The ninth-seeded Ironmen put together a long drive looking to answer, but the Big Red defense came up with a stop and held the visitors to a field goal, then on the ensuing drive Henderson again had a couple nice runs to set up another Turner score for a 14-3 lead, which was the score after one.
After the running game did the work in the first quarter, Haney hit Stephen McShan with a nice pass on the next Big Red drive, setting up a 9-yard scoring run from Henderson, who had 70 yards in setting up the first scores.
Jackson got an interception late in the half to keep the margin at 21-3 going into the break.
The Ironmen put together a strong drive out of the gate to start the second half, Tate Rosler taking the ball 33 yards on the first snap to start what ended up being a 14-play scoring drive capped by Rosler on a fourth-and-goal from the 2 to cut the margin to 21-10. The drive took nearly 10 minutes off the clock, however.
Steubenville answered just two plays later when Henderson broke free twith a 73-yard scoring run, his second TD of the game. He accounted for all 80 yards on the short Steubenville drive.
Jackson then fumbled on the first snap of its next drive and Steubenville's Kyler Snyder came out of the pile with the ball. Three plays later, Haney fired a strike to Anderson for a 16-yard score and the Big Red led went from 11 to 25 in a span of five plays.
"(Rosler) is a tough player, he is only a junior and he plays hard," Saccoccia said. "They have a good football team and its a young football team, On that long drive they had to start the second half, we kept getting them back to the huddle, you want to make them earn it. That was a great drive for them, but it ate up a lot of the clock and then we scored quick, I thought that was a little bit of turning point when we scored quickly right after that drive."
Rosler scored on a 41-yard run one play after a Big Red fumble early in the fourth quarter, but 35-17 would be as close as the Ironmen would get.
Simmons capped a long Steubenville scoring drive to answer right back with a 2-yard plunge across the goal line to cap the 10-play march.
Luke provided the final points of the night when he broke a 76-yard run deep into the Jackson end then went the final 11 yards on the next play to provide the final margin.
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Big Red will take on No. 5 seed Dover in the regional semifinal in a rematch of a regular season meeting between the teams. The Crimson Tornadoes went on the road and topped No. 4 Athens on Friday night, 41-0.
Steubenville won the regular season contest 44-14 all the way back in Week 2.