Lansdale Catholic sticks to strengths to top Wissahickon

LOWER GWYNEDD >> Lansdale Catholic had a pretty direct line of thinking Saturday afternoon.

The Crusaders were going to let their line do the work up front, keep chipping away with the run game, wait for a few big plays and then when the time was right, open things up with the pass. Defensively, it was a pretty similar approach to respect Wissahickon’s speed, don’t get caught trying to do too much and use help to make stops.

LC did what it wanted to, topping the host Trojans 35-14 to pick up its first win of the season.

“We kept coming out hard and kept pushing,” LC running back Danny Dutkiewicz said. “Our o-line made everything work.”

Wiss started well, scoring first and getting two first quarter defensive stops to carry a 7-0 lead into the first quarter break. First-year coach Bruce Fleming has been putting a lot of work in behind the scenes with his players and some of it is starting to show through to the field.

For instance, Saturday’s game was supposed to happen Friday night. While most of the crowd didn’t return on Saturday morning, Fleming felt his guys showed up with the same level of energy and enthusiasm and it showed as the Trojans recovered an early LC fumble and also got a stop on a fourth down conversion attempt.

“We put points on the board twice today and that’s something we couldn’t do the first two weeks,” Fleming said. “Our offense is still trying to find a chemistry to help our defense out. Our defense has played well in the first half, but we want to give them more points and maybe that will start to help us out in the second half.”

Jalen Smalls put the Trojans on the board first with a powerful 43-yard touchdown run where he fought his way to the left edge, then put his speed to work breaking away from the defense.

Wissahickon has a lot of underclassmen playing in key roles and got some depth back on Saturday as Chris Smalls and Nick Santo made their season debut. Santo shook off some rust at quarterback and threw for a fourth-quarter touchdown while starting a connection with Maurice Willis, who had 100 receiving yards.

Fleming noted many of the areas where his team has most improved aren’t the kind that immediately show up on the field, like the players listening to the talk he and his assistant coaches gave them Friday night and then applying it Saturday morning.

“The steps I’m most positive about are things people on the outside aren’t going to see,” Fleming said. “It’s things inside the program that just weren’t there the past few years, but we’re slowly working in that direction. They’re working their way to the point where it will transition onto the field and everybody will see it.”

After its first three drives ended with a punt, a lost fumble and getting stopped on fourth down, Lansdale Catholic relied on the defense to settle into the game. The Crusaders held Wissahickon and forced a short punt, ran the ball a few times, then got on the board when quarterback Peter McHugh’s second pass of the game went 16 yards to Tyler Owen for a score.

“My o-line giving me time helped give the receivers time to get open,” McHugh, who went 7-of-8, said. “I would not have had the time to throw without them, so they really made everything happen.”

McHugh ended up throwing for 168 yards and three scores and added 32 yards on the ground as part of a dedicated running attack. LC ran the ball 10 times before attempting its first pass and by the end of the game, 10 different players had gotten at least one carry.

Dutkiewicz led LC with 141 rushing yards on 22 carries while also playing linebacker and had the go-ahead score midway through the second quarter. The 6-foot junior tailback may have gotten the most carries and the most yards of anyone on his team, but deflected credit to his guys up front moving Wissahickon defenders out of his way.

“They were making big holes and sticking with their blocks,” Dutkiewicz said of his linemen. “They were getting to the second level a lot.”

LC led just 14-7 at the half, but continued to work the ball down the field after halftime with McHugh hitting Colin McKeever for a 59 yard touchdown and Evand Zawadski for a 12-yard score in the third quarter. Mike Shrager completed the scoring for LC with a 10-yard run in the fourth before Santo found Willis on a 30-yard TD pass for Wiss with 2:31 left in the game.

Coming off a loss to a good Penn Charter team last weekend in Ocean City, the Crusaders felt like they had found some things that worked for them. LC coach Tom Kirk said even with an experienced line and a group of backs that work well together, his team still hadn’t really found its full stride yet.

“We like running the ball and throwing off of that, and that’s what happened today,” Kirk said. “The defense did a nice job of eventually shutting down our run but it opened up a lot on the outside for Peter to find some receivers. He’s worked hard in the offseason and understands our offense really well.”