Harrison outlasts McBain to win wild playoff opener 60-52

By BEN MURPHY

Cleaver Sports Writer

On a night that was all about the offense, it was the defense that sealed the game for the Harrison football team Friday. The Hornets, playing at McBain in their Division 7 playoff opener, got a Ray Cosgrove interception with just over a minute to play; the Hornets took a knee from there, giving them quite the thrilling 60-52 victory over the Ramblers.

“He made a great play on the ball,” head coach Jamie Lipovsky said of the game-sealing interception. “They ran one of their trick plays, a reverse back to the quarterback to throw. It took a long time, which gave my defensive backs time. Ray made a great play, did a great job and when he did that it was a huge sigh of relief for all the kids, the coaches, for everybody.”

The victory was certainly a hard-earned one for the Hornets. They battled with McBain in a wild contest that featured two offenses that seemed to have little interest in allowing opposing defenses to stop them.

“There’s all kinds of thoughts, I’m so proud of my kids,” Lipovsky said. “To me, this was a heavyweight bout, they punched us, we punched back and I’m just happy our kids, every time momentum shifted back to McBain, my kids rose up and kept the momentum with us and kept fighting. I’m just so proud of the way they had that never say die attitude, it could have been real easy to give up when the other team was scoring like they were. Definitely an emotional game.”

McBain put up the first points of the night about three minutes into the game, but Harrison was quick to respond with a Matt Latunski 25-yard touchdown run, and it was 8-8 early on. Aiden Brewer followed by breaking free for a 70-yard touchdown run, making it 16-8, but that lead was short-lived as the Ramblers tied it up moments later, 16-16.

Harrison was able to take a two-score lead by the half, 38-28. In that span, Brewer had a 53-yard touchdown run, Brewer scored on a 12-yard rush and Latunski fired an 11-yard touchdown pass to Collin Dennis.

The Hornets appeared to be pulling away in the third quarter, as they pushed their lead to 46-28 thanks to a one-yard plunge from Latunski. A 65-yard touchdown run by Brewer later in the third pushed that gap back to 54-36, but McBain fought back from there.

The Ramblers scored back-to-back touchdowns in the fourth quarter to pull within 54-52. Harrison’s offense once again delivered though, putting together a must-have drive late in the game. They eventually capped it off with a 15-yard touchdown run by Nyxon Rhodes, though a failed two-point conversion left them ahead 60-52.

McBain looked poised to put in a score of its’ own in the final moments; as they completed a couple passes, narrowly missed out on a couple of others and reached into Harrison territory. However, Cosgrove read their late trick play perfectly, stepping in front of the would-be Rambler receiver to haul in the interception near the five-yard line.

“McBain is a very quality team, we knew from the film we had on them that they were tough,” Lipovsky said. “We scored to go up by eight and my concern there was there was time left on the clock, and we had to get that to wind down and then we picked the ball off.”

Brewer had a monster of a night on offense, running 19 times for 296 yards and four touchdowns. Latunski rushed for 115 yards and two touchdowns on 14 attempts, and he was also a perfect four-of-four passing for 63 yards and one touchdown. Rhodes finished with 78 yards and a score on six carries, Dennis ran 13 times for 52 yards and Cosgrove rushed seven times for 21 yards and he also hauled in three passes for 56 yards and one touchdown. Cosgrove also had one reception for seven yards. In all the Hornets had 625 yards of total offense.

“The offensive line played great, the whole offense played great,” Lipovsky said. “The running backs, even when they didn’t have the ball, blocked and ran fakes; our kids ran so many great fakes and did a good job of keeping them on their heels. Brewer set himself up with that performance because even when he didn’t have the ball, he would be 25 yards down the field in the secondary running like he had it, so when we did give him the ball the other team thought he was just running his fakes. He had almost 300 yards rushing and I bet he had another 300 yards in fakes when he didn’t have the ball.”

The defense was led by Daniel Seefeld with seven tackles, Latunski took down six, Dennis and Alex Erskine both had five and Alex Jansen took down four. Cosgrove also had four tackles to go along with his interception.

Harrison (8-2 overall) heads to Charlevoix (7-2) on Friday for a district championship game. The Rayders are coming off a 35-0 win over Oscoda in their playoff opener.