Now in its second season, the Intelligencer/Courier Times ‘Let’s Talk Football,’ features high school football beat writers Kevin Cooney and Dan Dunkin. Cooney, who also is the Phillies beat writer, continues to cover schools in the Intelligencer area while Dan Dunkin – who has been covering sports at the high school and professional level for 25 years - covers teams in the Courier Times area. Both beat writers share their perspective on the teams in their coverage area. To stay on top of the high school football news in the area, visit the web site
SuburbanOneSports.com: Central Bucks South sent PW home for the season with its 52-24 win in an opening round game on Friday. You were at that game – share your thoughts.
Kevin Cooney: If you look at CB South’s nine possessions – they had seven touchdowns, one field goal and one possession where the clock ran out. They were really able to benefit from good field position. Part of that was because PW did not want to kick it to Dan Brown. It’s kind of pick your poison – do you give it to Brown at the 10 and maybe he runs it back, or do you give the ball at the 40 and give Matt Johns, Dan Brown, Chris Veal and all these weapons they have basically 55-60 yards to score. South was surgically efficient. If you look at the actual raw numbers of the game – the total yards, it’s not that great, but then you realize they put up 52 points. I think their average field position was their own 42.
I think what is stunning to a lot of people is that this was a PW defense that was brilliant all season. They were number one in the district with a 7.2 points a game average and had allowed 65 points for the whole year, and suddenly, they give up 52 points. I think it’s a combination of short field and a team right now that’s just feeling very confident in the way it is playing offensively. It is a pretty imposing matchup right now. We said this was a team to watch, and now they’re part of this whacky tournament that I think anyone can win.
Look, PW had great team speed. That was what everybody sold PW on, and PW was very strong because of that. However, I think now if you look at it – I don’t think they were super deep. Hindsight being 20-20, they didn’t match up as well as we thought. We thought their speed would neutralize the stretchiness of South’s offense. However, what it did was – it just created more holes, and no matter how fast you are, if you can’t patch every hole, there’s a problem, and they had trouble patching the holes. They had trouble filling the holes when Brown would go up the middle. They just seemed a half step behind and that shouldn’t happen to a team with speed, but that’s because the weapons stretched them out too much. If you have a chemical, and it’s super strong – it’s almost like CB South’s offense is the water. It spreads it out and thins it out a little bit, so that at a certain point, it’s almost like they diluted PW’s speed advantage because they had spread everything out.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Matt Johns was 16-for-22 in CB South’s win. Talk about the performance of South’s offence.
Kevin Cooney: It was important the way Johns did it because if you look at the numbers – a lot of it was short passes. PW would send seven, eight, nine players into the box to gear up against Brown. Johns would step off the line and throw a quick hitch, and there’s Veal on the outside. What you’re seeing now is Johns with the ability to thread the ball through a needle, Brown being this big running back, and you have a thousand-yard receiver in Veal. This is what makes them so difficult.
SuburbanOneSports.com: What can opposing teams do to slow down CB South?
Kevin Cooney: The one thing CB South is susceptible to, in my opinion – if you decide to muscle up, let’s see how they are when they get hit. If Johns takes a few hits, if Brown takes a few hits – both Brown and Veal had injuries last year, which set them back. I have not seen a team really get physical and play deep contact press coverage on Veal. I haven’t seen a lot of real press coverage against Brown coming out of the backfield, putting two or three guys who kind of spy on him. If you’d see that, that’s where I think they’re vulnerable. If you double up Veal, have two guys on Brown and then dare Johns to go beat them with everyone else – how would they handle that? That’s how I imagine you’re going to see teams play them the rest of the way.
Quite honestly, the other thing that could hurt South big time – you’re getting to the point in the season where you could have inclement weather on any given night, and if you play in inclement weather and you can’t do necessarily what you normally do – we saw what happened in their loss to North Penn where field conditions and just their style of play could expose them, but right now, they’re dangerous. They have the confidence that I don’t think we’ve even seen from the CB South team with Eric Reynolds in ’07. I don’t think we’ve ever seen them as confident as they are right now.
The defense is still a concern. They still allowed 41 points to CB East. They did a decent job of shutting down PW, but PW almost got into a game where they felt they had to catch up all the time, and South still surrendered over 300 yards of total offense.
SuburbanOneSports.com: How will CB South match up this week against Garnet Valley?
Kevin Cooney: It’s strange. The team they are facing this week – Garnet Valley – plays a spread offense. You figure it helps South because they see it every day at practice, but on the flip side, is it something that I think they can be exposed by? Yes, but at this point every team in the tournament has a flaw.
I think they can beat Garnet Valley. I just wonder if after the way Garnet Valley had to play against Ridley last week – it was so run oriented and so pound, pound, pound, and that’s a punishing style. Now they have to adjust to something 180 degrees different. How do you do it in a week? How do you prepare in seven days?
Again, I really liked PW going into last week’s game, and the way CB South looked last week kind of told me – maybe they’re for real. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have to wonder how Garnet Valley will make that adjustment so quickly from playing against a smash mouth team to playing the greatest show on natural turf. I just don’t see it, I don’t see where that happens in high school.
CB South was a team that before the season everyone was like, ‘Keep your eye on them.’ It was because they had their quarterback back, but little did we know that Dan Brown was back healthy, which allowed Chris Veal to go into a more natural position. We didn’t know this offensive line would come together this well. What will get them eventually is that their defense is a little suspect.
SuburbanOneSports.com: What do the results of the opening weekend of playoffs – which saw many of the tournament’s top seeds go home – tell you about this year’s district tournament?
Kevin Cooney: If you look at it, the National and Continental Conferences were a combined 5-1. The only loss was because one team played another. If you want to take that as an example and you look at who North Penn has played and who CB South played – CB South played CR South and North Penn, and I believe they scrimmaged Abington. They had a decent schedule behind them. You look at the four teams in the National Conference, and you realize how tough they were. To go 5-1 shows that those two conferences – for all the talk about the Ches-Mont and all the talk about PW being a legitimate contender (and I was as guilty as anybody of that), the road still went through where we thought it would go through.
The seedings kind of muddied the field. The way the seeding structure is right now is so flawed. You had the 16 best teams, but you didn’t have them in the right order, and now you’re seeing the end result of it. I didn’t think any of the results last weekend were jaw-dropping upsets. If you want to say Pennsbury over Abington is an upset – yes, but it’s a division game, and the first game between the two teams was close. Was PW one of the eight best teams if you had a traditional bracket? Yes, probably, but would CB South have probably been nine? Yes. Could that have been an eight-nine game? Yes.
When you look at PW and Upper Dublin – I think the last time an American Conference team won a Class AAAA playoff team may have been Cheltenham in ’01. It’s been a while, and I think that’s not an accident. What you have to see – and I think PW has taken this step, but I think the Upper Dublins, the Cheltenhams and the Wissahickons have to beef up their non-league schedules. PW played Abington and West Chester Henderson, but maybe throwing a North Penn in isn’t a bad idea for one of them. It forces you to step up a level before the playoffs. You may take a couple years of licks, but in the long run, it may help your program. Would it hurt them to play a Neshaminy, which is playing CB East and Hatboro right now? Could Neshaminy substitute an Upper Dublin and get more power points? I would think that’s a pretty good idea. I’m not criticizing Neshaminy’s schedule, but I think it’s important for those American Conference teams to schedule up. It’s one of those end-of-the-year thoughts. There were a lot of years where the Class AAAA field had no American Conference teams because Upper Moreland was the best team, and they’re AAA. I think if you look at what happened to PW and Upper Dublin, it’s pretty important that for them to take the next step they’re going to have to schedule up a bit and somehow eliminate that bye in the middle of the season.
There are certain things we learned this year. 1) There is not a super team, there is not the instant state contender, there is not the overwhelming favorite, but there are some decent teams that are going to make the tournament fun. That’s why a couple of these games this weekend are very interesting.
You have North Penn and Neshaminy because they play every year. I don’t know how fair a comparison this is, but in a way, Neshaminy has become the (St. Louis) Cardinals. You look at the final two-three weeks of the season, and they couldn’t slip up or the playoffs were done. They ran the table – beat Pennsbury at Pennsbury and then beats Unionville at Unionville. Neshaminy is playing with house money if you think about it. This is not a classic Neshaminy team that is gangbusters and talent, but they are now playing with a world of confidence because of the way they played down the stretch.
SuburbanOneSports.com: North Penn had a big win over Rustin. Your thoughts about North Penn?
Kevin Cooney: North Penn is a pretty good team. Everybody will talk about that, but you also look at no (James) Fielder last week, no Joe Potkovac – their offensive lineman who’s out, and Corey Ernst is banged up. Kyle Mayfield left that game last week, and he was banged up. The one thing that brings North Penn – who everyone seems to think is the consensus favorite to win this – back is if they start losing players to injuries. It’s hard to say a school as big as North Penn is running out of depth, but you wonder at some point – what’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. If they are healthy, I think North Penn is the better team, but I wonder if at some point the health catches up with them. If they get healthy, they will win this thing, but health is the big equalizer here. They’re playing against a Neshaminy team that, quite frankly, doesn’t have a hell of a lot to lose. This is what makes it a fascinating matchup on Friday.
North Penn is the team you would assume is the favorite. North Penn is playing very well right now. Ernst is playing very well, and if Mayfield is healthy – and it sounds like he will be, he’s a big factor. Dan Gevirtz moving from wide out to tailback is another wrinkle.
It seems like Neshaminy and North Penn play each other all the time, and it’s been a while since Neshaminy won one of these. North Penn won convincingly in the district title game last year. It’s a rivalry game, but there’s not a lot of jaw-dropping, ‘Wow, that was a great game’ kind of games. One team wins by 20, the other team wins by 20. There was one overtime game that everyone still says was a great game. I would take North Penn on Friday night, and I would think it’s going to be closer than most people think, but history doesn’t show you that.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Pennsbury pulled the big upset of Abington. Your thoughts about the Falcons.
Kevin Cooney: Obviously, the Falcons’ win over Abington was a big win for them. The program has had success in the playoffs before, but for them to go on the road after such a disappointing loss at home the week before and to beat Abington was huge for them confidence-wise. Going down to Coatesville is not an easy trip, but I think it would be less daunting than going back to Abington. Coatesville is also a team that, quite frankly, in the last couple of years has had its share of playoff slipups.
I think you have to give Coatesville a slight edge, but Pennsbury is one of those teams that is playing with house money. I think the overriding thing is we’re looking at an all-SOL semifinal. I’m taking the two Souths – CB South and CR South, I’m taking North Penn, and I’m taking Pennsbury. Maybe that comes across as a homer because I’m appearing on the Suburban One web site, but you just get the sense that it’s coming to that. Maybe I’m totally misreading this – and it wouldn’t’ be the first time I did, but I just get that sense that that’s the way this thing is headed. Yes, I’ll take Pennsbury and I’m going to take CB South. Can we really be denied a Pennsbury-North Penn matchup? They haven’t played since the conference change. It would be a lot of fun to see it happen.
SuburbanOneSports.com: What are your thoughts about Council Rock South heading into the second round?
Kevin Cooney: Downingtown East will be a tough matchup obviously. I would like to see CR South be a little more consistent. They seemed kind of flat line by everyone’s account last week. It’s tough in the first round sometimes to get up, but Brian Donnelly has a shot to have a big night. It’s Downingtown East’s second week on the road, and for them – a really long trip. There’s no good way to get from Downingtown to Newtown in rush hour on a Friday. Maybe I’m putting too much false logic in, but I’ll go with that theory. If you’re CR South, you want a shot to get back to where you were last year in a year when I don’t think a lot of people expected that coming into it.
SuburbanOneSports.com: You picked Neshaminy to beat Unionville, and you were on target. Talk about that game.
Dan Dunkin: Neshaminy was more physical than Unionville, and coming in, I just think it’s a tougher league that Neshaminy plays in. I also thought they were really buoyed from the confidence of beating Pennsbury in an always tough, physical game. They had found their confidence after struggling at midseason. Their younger players are playing with more confidence, their veteran players are stepping up, and they were playing with a new lease on life. They were in control of that game from the outset.
Neshaminy got an early turnover – a great pass rush by Kiser Terry helped force an interception by Denny Lord. They had a short field and cashed it in right away for a touchdown. Their running game and Sean Ulmer were just terrific. Their offensive line won the game. They were just way more physical, got a lot of push, and Ulmer was able to pick some holes and had a big night. Joe Bianchino has been playing consistently well the last month at quarterback, and he was able to spread the ball around.
Their defense was terrific as the shutout would indicate. They shut down their big running back – not the entire game – but continually forced them to punt. Rarely was Unionville in a position to threaten, and really, after the first quarter, you just told yourself, ‘Wow, Neshaminy could win this game going away,’ and they did. In the fourth quarter, they ran a reverse pass by Justin Andrews that was right off the blackboard. It was just beautiful execution of the play. Their front seven on defense played really well. They tackled well, they pursued, and it was just a solid victory on both sides of the ball by Neshaminy.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Your thoughts about Pennsbury’s big win over Abington.
Dan Dunkin: Shawn Pepper is a terrific athlete who has been used mainly on defense this year and has been an impact guy. He has helped make their defense good. You saw what he could do when he gets the ball in his hands – I think you might see more of that next year if he plays some quarterback. His kickoff return for a touchdown was huge. They were really able to match Abington in explosiveness, which surprised me a little. I knew their defense would come to play, and knowing the first time they played Abington, that game was really pretty even for the last two and a half quarters in a Pennsbury loss, and they knew they could play with Abington. I was impressed. They shook off the really disappointing loss to Neshaminy, which affected their seeding and maybe their confidence for a couple of days, but it’s a testament to their coaching staff and their kids that they refocused really quickly. They knew a team inside and out that they had played before and lost to. They didn’t let Ray Schreiner kill them. They limited him for the most part. They did get burned with some big passing plays – Josh Lee is a terrific player, but they were able to make explosive plays themselves. I was surprised it was a high-scoring game. That’s going to help Pennsbury’s confidence from an offensive standpoint. It just says a lot about their program and Galen Snyder that they were able to regroup like that and beat a team that many thought was the class of the league along with Council Rock South this year.
SuburbanOneSports.com: The Falcons will travel to Coatesville to take on a high-scoring Red Raider squad. Your prediction for that game?
Dan Dunkin: It’s a tall order for Pennsbury - having to re-gather themselves like they did and now they go up against a Coatesville team that put up 60 against a really good Spring-Ford team. That doesn’t mean Coatesville will go out and score 30 or 40 in this game, but they do have a lot of firepower that’s really going to stretch Pennsbury’s defense and probably will put a little more pressure on their offense to produce and come up with a couple more explosive plays. I think they might be playing from behind a little bit and might need to strike quick. I think Coatesville has a little too much on offense for them in this game, but I think it will be a very competitive game.
SuburbanOneSports: Council Rock South accumulated over 500 yards of total offense in its win over Upper Dublin. Your thoughts about Rock South?
Dan Dunkin: Anthony Alimenti has really been the breakout kid of the area this past month, and he had another huge game. They’re clicking on all cylinders. They’re rolling with confidence. They’re able to do what they do and not have to worry about throwing in a gadget or a few extra passing plays because they execute so well. They’re just so well coached. They’re disciplined, they’re unselfish, and they know it could be a different guy’s night in every game. They’ve got multiple weapons. They did what they should have done in that first game and won handily.
For a team that’s really been up front all season, they’ve had only a couple of lulls, and they are way in the past – the 2-0 win over Pennridge and then losing to Pennsbury 13-10. Other than that, this is a team that has responded. They know where they want to go. They really think they can go all the way, and it’s a swagger, but it’s not an arrogance with these kids. They’re really well grounded. Vince Bedesem has built quite a program there, and you’re seeing it in a lot of these seniors who were right there when this program started turning the corner a couple of years ago. They’ve just gotten better and better.
They’re hungry. They wanted to win the league this year, and they got a share of the league title and the top seed in the district. They know they have a target on their back, but they like it. They want to prove they’re worthy of that, and they certainly did in the first game, and I think they will again against Downingtown East. I think that will be more of a challenge for their defense in that game – you don’t hear as much about South’s defense as you do their offense because they put up such big rushing yardage, but they have enough speed and enough toughness and discipline, to trust their teammates to make plays and not try to do too much themselves individually. I think that will serve them well in their next game. They might have to score a few more points, but I think they will win this game, and I think their physicality will be the difference.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Neshaminy is playing North Penn in an all-SOL game on Friday. Comment about that game.
Dan Dunkin: North Penn and Neshaminy – here we go again. I think this is going to be a really good game. I saw North Penn on Saturday against Rustin. They’re not quite the powerful North Penn team they’ve been the past two years, but they’re still very formidable. They gave up a couple of big plays in that game, but it says so much when a guy – Dan Gevirtz, who’s primarily a wideout and their best receiver – steps in for an injured running back and goes for over 200 yards rushing. North Penn was just way more physical, and he had a lot of glaring holes to go through. He made a lot of good moves, and he has great speed.
Ralph Reeves led a defensive effort that was good enough when it had to be. The kid’s a terrific player both ways. He’s as good an all-around player as there is in the entire area. He had three touchdowns at fullback and is on the field almost every single play.
I think Neshaminy is going to be in this game. Their defense is going to have to play even better than last week. They’re going to give up some points, but I think they can really contend with North Penn. I think North Penn will win a close game. They have a little more firepower. Neshaminy really is playing with house money now. Also, they hate the way last year ended in a rout - a 42-6 loss to North Penn. North Penn has beaten them the last three times they played in the playoffs, so all of that will enter into this game. I wouldn’t be shocked if Neshaminy won, but I’m picking North Penn in a close one.
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