|
By JAMES BESSETTE Contributing writer PAWTUCKET — If you were within the vicinity of Max Read Field last night and happened to hear a loud “thud,” that was the sound of a large cluster of jaws dropping to the ground after last night’s non-league gridiron battle between West Warwick and Shea.
The Wizards took their reputation of being a second-half team to a whole new level as the Orange and Black erased a 19-point fourth-quarter deficit to stun the Raiders on the road, 27-26, to move to 5-1 overall on the season.
“This feels real good,” West Warwick quarterback Russell Strickland, who threw for 107 yards on 10-of-12 passing and three touchdowns, said. “I’m speechless right now. This is crazy.”
The rally all started soon after Shea running back Mark Vassallo ran a 14-yard run into the end zone 37 seconds into the fourth quarter to put the Raiders up 26-7, and seemingly in firm control of the contest.
From there, West Warwick didn’t do much adjusting in terms of special plays or doing anything to confuse a specific part of the Shea defense during its late rally. It was a matter of cleaning things up with its basic techniques.
Throughout the first half, the Wizards couldn’t execute much, if anything, offensively with the Raiders front seven constantly giving the offensive line problems blocking up front.
Strickland was sacked four times through the first 24 minutes and West Warwick didn’t help itself either by fumbling a pair of snaps, one of them on a punt that put Shea at the Wizard 15-yard line, where Shea quarterback Albert Amado (5-of-15, 84 yards and two touchdowns) connected with wide receiver Chris DePina for a touchdown three plays later to give the Raiders the 7-0 lead.
In the fourth quarter, the Wizards brought in tight end Charley Parent as an extra blocker and filled the blocks up the middle to give both Willie Alves and Jimmy Mullins running room up the gut.
“I was telling the guys at halftime to stay confident because we knew it was going to happen,” West Warwick head coach Shane Lagor said. “We kicked ourselves in the foot a little bit in the first half. But, if we stayed together and worked hard, good things were going to happen and it did.”
Alves, who ran 132 yards on the night on 23 carries, got the rally started when he took the handoff from Strickland on a 2nd-and-9 play from the Shea 34-yard line, made a quick cut from the middle to the left sideline and left the Raiders behind for the touchdown, cutting Shea’s lead in half at 26-13.
After forcing the Raiders on a three-and-out, both Alves and Mullins (12 carries, 74 yards) led the charge for West Warwick, busting up the middle play after play against the previously-quick and now-tiring Shea defense for big gains, bringing the Wizards to a goal-to-go situation at the Raider 5-yard line.
Then, for the second time in the game, Strickland connected with Alves in the air on a fourth-down completion in the end zone with 2:44 to go. The first time came in the first quarter when Strickland and Alves hooked up for a 34-yard bomb near the Shea sideline that tied the score at 7-7 at the time.
After the touchdown to bring West Warwick back to 26-19, the Wizards went for two and got it by the skin of their teeth. Strickland avoided a sack by Shea linebacker James Cardoso and ran a slant to the left into the end zone for the conversion and a 26-21 deficit.
Riding high on motivation, West Warwick successfully put Shea into a deep fourth-down situation, highlighted by a big sack of Amado by Jordan Koehler and Alves for a 14-yard loss.
It only got worse for Shea as its punt inadvertently went into the offensive line and the Wizards recovered on the 28-yard line, putting the Orange and Black in prime position for a potential.
Three plays later, West Warwick called for a scat pass similar to the one that beat Tolman in the second week of the season and it worked to perfection, once again. Strickland, on 3rd-and-9, found tight end Amine Malki wide open in the right corner of the end zone for a 27-yard touchdown with 41 seconds to go in the game to put West Warwick on top.
The Wizards then forced four-straight incompletes on defense to clinch the win, causing a loud scream from the West Warwick team, and its fans, right after the final buzzer sounded at Max Read Field.
For Shea, which gained the early lead thanks to a 58-yard touchdown by Malcum Moniz on a quick pitch to the right and then Amado hooking up with Vassallo on a wide-open, two-yard pass to the left side of the end zone, last night’s result was a bitter pill to swallow regardless if the game was a non-league affair.
“It doesn’t matter,” a frustrated Shea head coach Dino Campopiano, who saw his Raiders fall to 2-4 overall, said. “You have to come out and, if you’re up by three scores in the fourth quarter, you have to put the game away. They (West Warwick) said it wasn’t put away. We did. That was the difference. West Warwick didn’t give up. They’ve been a second-half team and it’s a tribute to them.”
|
Horoscope
