Back for its 10th season, the popular Intelligencer/Bucks County Courier Times ‘Let’s Talk Football’ features football beat writers Drew Markol and Todd Thorpe.
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SuburbanOneSports.com: Central Bucks West defeated North Penn for the first time since 2000 and put itself in a position to win the conference title with a win over Souderton on Friday night. Your comments.
Drew Markol: “That was one of the best games I’ve seen in a long time excitement-wise. It was rare to see North Penn lose a game, let alone a Continental Conference game, but they were just sloppy with the football. They had five turnovers, which is unheard of. The fact that they were still in the 
game tells you that they’re still really good. There were a couple of points in the second half – North Penn was pounding away at its run game, which is what it does. Sophomore Khaloni Eaton had close to 170 yards rushing. He’s the perfect running back for that type of offense because it’s four and five yards at a time. He just pounds, and it just sucks up the clock. He rarely loses yardage. I’m sure Dick Beck, the North Penn coach, loves it, and I don’t blame him because it’s perfect. That’s what they were starting to do, and you say to yourself ‘All right, this is where North Penn wears them down,’ but West didn’t break. West hung in there, and North Penn did a good job against Jack Fallon, the West running back who had over 1200 yards rushing going into that game. If you do the math, that’s 150 yards rushing a game. He was pretty much being kept relatively in check, and he catches that late pass and he makes a great catch, and then he breaks what looked like four or five tackles - and North Penn is always a good tackling team – and flips the entire script and just ignites his team. Two plays later, he goes right up the middle and scores standing up. You kept wondering going into the game – could North Penn contain Fallon? They kind of did. He was over 100 yards rushing, but he didn’t have those huge plays he normally has. You’re thinking to yourself, ‘He hasn’t had that big play that’s been the difference in a lot of their games.’ Then he has the big play at the biggest moment. It was just a fun game to watch.
“Fallon is one of West’s best players in a while. People ask me about him – I tell them he’s one of the most heads-up players knowing how to play the game. There was one play late in the game where Eaton had some space, and he was one-on-one against Fallon, who also plays safety and is a very good defensive player – I wouldn’t be surprised if he played defense in college. Fallon kind of backed away from Eaton for a split second, and watching the play, you say to yourself ‘Boy, that’s weird that he would back off from a potential tackle.’ But what he was doing was he backed off so he could reach for the ball, and he yanked the ball out. You say to yourself, ‘They must have seen something on film’ because he wasn’t avoiding the tackle or afraid to tackle him. He was saying, ‘I’m pulling that ball out,’ and he did. It was an unbelievable defensive play, just a heads up play that not many high school kids make. North Penn fumbles and West recovers. As remarkable as the reception was – and that was one for the ages, this one was a darn good football play, but that’s what he does. He’s also their punter. He faked a punt, got a first down. That’s a nice weapon to have too when your best player is also your punter because North Penn was yelling for a fake every time West went back to punt. What Fallon did in the first half – he faked the fake, and then he punted it. When he did actually fake it in the second half, North Penn hesitates for a second because they think he might be faking the fake again. Instead, he runs and gets the first down. He set them up. It’s different level thinking than you normally see in high school. Rob Rowan, the second year coach at West, has done a phenomenal job. We always talk about the lack of numbers for West. He said in summer camp - the savvy that kid has on the field is really something.
“In the summer, the normal question you ask a coach – how many kids do you have out for the team? The normal answer is 60, 70 or 80 depending on the size of the school. Those numbers used to be in the hundreds, but not as many kids are playing football. Rob Rowan tells you – we have 41, and your first reaction is, ‘Okay, three kids get hurt…’ He said, ‘I like our 41.’ I asked Fallon about that after the game. He said, ‘It comes down to the 11 we have on the field, and I’ll take our 11.’ You have your best player on offense (Fallon) playing safety. You have your quarterback, Jack Neri – who’s very good and had a couple of nice runs and throws a nice ball, playing in the secondary too. You don’t want that, but out of necessity, you have to have it. Rowan has done a good job. Ideally, what West wants to do is build a big lead and get those guys out of the game. Obviously, they couldn’t do it against North Penn. In the CB East game the week before, I don’t think Fallon played in the second half. He wasn’t hurt. They were saving him for North Penn. It’s things like that that spur interest in the program and get kids wanting to come out and play. It’s just a remarkable job.
“Dick Beck, the North Penn coach, was very gracious at the end. No complaints – he congratulated West for the way it played. From a fan’s standpoint, we see so many district playoffs games where it’s one local team against East Tennessee who we don’t care about. I’d love to see a rematch of those two because that was great stuff. It was a good game. Both sides just really went at it. That game had a lot of the feel of the North Penn/West games in the late 90s and early 2000s until you looked on the sidelines and saw a whole lot less players.
“If West wins on Friday, they’ll win a conference championship. It’s something that teams in the same conference with North Penn have not been able to say much. Now they can. I’m still a believer that it’s a big deal to win league titles. I don’t care if you go and lose to Garnet Valley or some school 60 miles away. I’d make West a slight favorite over Souderton, but Souderton does a lot of things on offense. Andrew Vince is really good, DeAndre Wakefield is really good and Nick Guthre the fullback is really good. They come at you in a number of ways. I think you’d have to favor West because of this win, but let’s remember Souderton-North Penn was 21-20 at halftime before North Penn went on a scoring run in the second half to pull away.”
Todd Thorpe: “CB West has a little bit of that team of destiny mojo right now. Drew Markol was there, I was not, but I saw the highlight of Jack Fallon’s one touchdown where he busted off two tacklers and went about 60 yards to set up a score. When you do those kinds of things, something is shining down 
on you. They just have a little of mojo going with them. The shame of the matter for them is that these last three weeks are like running the gauntlet at the end of the regular season. They beat North Penn in a monumental game, the first time they’ve won that game since Mike Carey beat Mike Pettine Jr. back in 2000. Now they have to turn around and play a Souderton team who I’m sure thinks they’re a little overlooked at this point. That’s another one of those pick ‘em games. I think CB West is a slight favorite because they did beat North Penn, and then CB West closes with Abington. I can’t say it won’t mean anything because West is honing in on maybe the number one seed in districts. Right now they’re number two, but number one Downingtown West plays Coatesville this week, so who knows? They might end up being the top seed in the district if they win out and at worst, number two.
“You just love the West story right now, and you love what Rob Rowan has done over there and Jack Fallon, Jack Neri and really an underrated offensive line that doesn’t get a ton of credit, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about how they play. It’s just old school CB West football. The statue of Mike Pettine no doubt is watching pretty intently from the stadium named War Memorial Field.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: Abington is one game away from winning the SOL National with its game against Pennsbury Friday the big game in the SOL this week. Your thoughts.
Todd Thorpe: “Abington was very, very impressive offensively against Truman. They really ran the ball at will. Andrick Wesh had a huge game – over 200 yards rushing and three touchdowns, which counteracted the fact that Truman did a pretty good job against Tamir Berthau. The middle of that offensive line made huge holes, and Truman didn’t really have any answers. Offensively, Truman turned the ball over again. They had four turnovers – three interceptions. They continued to make the mistakes they made the previous week against Pennsbury, and you’re not going to beat good teams that way, and they know that. They never really got the running game established. Sophomore quarterback Terrell Delp was really good in the second half off the bench, but at that point, it was too little too late. They were just trying to put some points on the board, but it was tough to get back in it.
“This sets Abington up this week to play at home against Pennsbury for the league championship. If Abington wins, they clinch the league title because it’s their last league game. They only have a non-league game against CB West. If Pennsbury wins, they still have to beat Neshaminy to get the title outright. I was at Pennsbury, and they’re still going to be without Drew Hensor, their running back/defensive back, and he’s very important to their team, probably one of the most athletic kids they have. He was injured against Truman, and he didn’t play last week. Coach Dan McShane said he thought he could play against Neshaminy, but he won’t be back this week. Just like we were talking about Abington – boy, the offensive line at Pennsbury is really confident right now. They’re big, they’re strong, they’re physical. It really is going to be a battle of the titans on both those lines of scrimmage on Friday night. Whoever wins that battle is going to win that game. Pennsbury has a chip on their shoulder. Out of their eight games, only one team has really scored on them, and that was Penn Wood. Everybody else they held low or the backups scored points. Pennsbury just has a stifling defense. They really don’t allow much. You don’t run up the middle against them.
“Abington is probably going to see a lot of Tamir Berthau. How improvising can he be? Can he make plays to get that defense scrambling a little bit? That’s what they’ll have to do. Pennsbury is probably going to gut and grind with a little bit of passing by CJ Kohler. They have a few running backs they can punch in there. JayVon McNeil, their senior, has played really well the last couple of weeks. He’s really a big bruising kid. He’s usually their goal line guy. He gets into the end zone a lot. He’s played really well. Brad Mickles, their other running back, is really experienced as well. It’s going to be interesting. I walked out of Pennsbury’s practice and I said, ‘Boy, they’re really confident. I like Pennsbury in this game,’ but I’m sure if I had walked out of Abington’s practice, I would have said the same thing. At least Friday night, I know Abington was really, really confident coming off that win over Truman.
“I would lean slightly towards Pennsbury, but it’s a pick ‘em game. Something about the way Pennsbury has played, the way they carry themselves now and the confidence they’re playing with makes me think they’re going to win this game, but you know what, Abington’s won seven in a row. They’re hardly a surprise. They’ve beaten some good teams. Cheltenham is a great win. Friday’s game is the two best teams in the conference, and if you break it down ever further, Pennsbury needs to win because they’re right now in that mix of five or six teams fighting for those final two playoff spots. I spoke about it in my notebook – there’s going to be a few 6-4 teams that aren’t getting in this year. For Pennsbury, they really need to win the game for that purpose. Abington is probably pretty secure where they are, but they want to win. They want to go undefeated in the league, they want to go play CB West, which will kind of be like a playoff game the week before the playoffs start. It will be interesting to see. I favor Pennsbury a little bit for no reason but just the way they carry themselves and the confidence they’re playing with.”
Drew Markol: “Kevin Conlin has got that team believing. They’re just putting up points. Their defense is stopping people. It’s really something. We’ve said this a million times – when they lost their opener to Northeast, we sort of dismissed them. It was to a Public League team, and you’re like, ‘Wow, they lost to Northeast.’ Well, it turned out Northeast is pretty good. Since then, Abington has won seven in a row. They beat Neshaminy. Their biggest game of the season until this week was last week against a Truman team that they had to beat if they wanted to win the National Conference. Truman needed to beat them and have Abington beat Pennsbury. Instead, Abington goes out and puts 40-something on them. Now Abington gets to play Pennsbury at home on Friday, and Pennsbury is playing very well. If Abington wins that, they win the conference because their last game is against CB West, which is interesting in itself. They do the crossover between the conferences, and at the beginning of the season, you look at week 10 and think – ‘Abington/CB West. Both teams will be 5-4.’ Well, no they won’t. If West can beat Souderton at Souderton on Friday – it should be a good game but you favor them – and if Abington can beat Pennsbury and I would favor Abington slightly, then week 10 you’ll have 9-0 West and 8-1 Abington. That’s going to affect the very top of the district seedings. You could have a number two seed in the district tournament on the line if all those things happen, but we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.
“We’ve had so many years in the past where we kind of knew – North Penn is 9-0 and the winner of Pennsbury/Neshaminy will get the five seed and the loser will get the nine seed, but now it’s made it interesting, which is great. You have two very interesting conference races in the National and Continental.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: Central Bucks East played itself back into the playoff picture with its 16-14 win over Central Bucks South. Your thoughts about the Patriots.
Drew Markol: “That was a nice win for CB East over CB South. East had a 3-0 start to the season and then they lost four in a row. Nobody needed a win more than they did. Central Bucks South came in 5-2 with its only losses to Downingtown West and CB West who are a combined 16-0, but East goes and beats them. After the game, John Donnelly said, ‘This was a playoff game for us. If we lose, we’re out.’ Instead of 3-5, they’re 4-4. They play Tennent at home on Saturday, which should be a winnable game. Then they play Pennridge, which hasn’t won since opening night. If East finishes up with three straight wins to go 6-4 with a nice win over South included in that, they’re going to get in the playoffs. There’s a team that stuck to it. You lose four in a row – most teams are done. They hung in there, and now they’ve given themselves a shot. If they play well the last two weeks, they get into the district playoffs. Beating CB South was the key to the whole thing. They went toe to toe with them - no pun intended. Michael Smigley kicks a 45-yard field goal, which would have been good from 50, and he nailed it. All of a sudden, here they are. They’ve kept themselves right in the thick of things. Good job by them.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: Cheltenham is one win away from clinching a share of the American Conference title. Your thoughts about that conference.
Todd Thorpe: “Cheltenham just rolls along. PW was their big win and Upper Dublin is still a big win even though Upper Dublin was banged up when they played them. Cheltenham has just done what they’ve done. They’re one of those teams with their talent and their abilities – 5A may be attainable for them in District One. There are some really tough teams in 5A when you talk about Academy Park and teams like that. Cheltenham right now has a slight advantage over Academy Park for the number one seed. If they win their next two games, all of a sudden they could be the number one seed in 5A. That’s remarkable. They could make some noise.
“The shame is you have to think Upper Dublin would have been in that mix too, but losing their quarterback – Mike Slivka - was a killer. You see these teams that have their steady quarterbacks – it seems like all the good teams have steady quarterbacks. Cheltenham has a really good quarterback in Adonis Hunter.
“Plymouth Whitemarsh is number nine in the Class 6A rankings, so they’re in good shape. If they win the last two weeks, they’ll probably play themselves up into a home game. That’s a remarkable season because no one really expected them to have that kind of year, but they got off to a really good start. The Cheltenham game – their only loss this season - could have gone either way. PW is the kind of quiet team you don’t know about right now.”
Drew Markol: “We thought Cheltenham would be good, but we thought they would be a second tier to Upper Dublin, but then Upper Dublin loses its quarterback Mike Slivka, and that has really, really hurt them. Plymouth Whitemarsh out of nowhere has put together a really good season. They laid it on Quakertown on Friday night.
“We’re getting some different blood and some games at the end that matter. For a person like myself if I were king for a day would get rid of the district playoffs and get rid of the state playoffs, I’d do a Southeastern Pennsylvania round robin tournament and include South Jersey and Delaware. That’s a concept for another day, but it makes the end of the season interesting.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: With just two more weeks in the regular season, talk about the playoff picture.
Todd Thorpe: “In Class 6A, CB West, Abington, North Penn, Souderton, Plymouth Whitemarsh all look like good bets to get in. I really think of the top 12 teams in the bracket right now as already in. There’s a chance one of those teams could lose twice and drop back into that four-loss range. While the top 12 look pretty secure, who are the next four? At 14, you’ve got CB South, which really was hurt by their loss to CB East last week. South is now 5-3, and they close with North Penn and Souderton. That’s not going to be an easy road for them at all. We’ve already talked about Pennsbury, which right now would be in, but they have to play Abington and then Neshaminy, so they’ve got a tough road.
“If you look at the teams that are on the outside looking in, CB East right now is 17 with a 4-4 record. If they close the season with two wins – and nothing’s easy in this world, but if they close the season with two wins, they’re kind of the leader in the clubhouse at a golf tournament. Let’s see where the points fall at that point. All they can do is win and see. The same thing falls in line with Truman, who is 4-4. The last two weeks have really hurt their prospects. If they win the last two games, they’re going to just sit back and wait and see. Neshaminy is 4-4. If they can beat Council Rock South this week and Pennsbury in their last game, you have to like their chances, but it doesn’t look like all those 6-4 teams are getting in. It’s going to be really interesting how the points play out in 6A for those final teams.
“If you throw a Pennsbury as the number 15 or 16 seed going to play a CB West or somebody like that, that’s not a gimme first round game by any stretch, so you’ll have some teams in the bottom half of that bracket that look like they can be real factors if they do get in. I think there will be some teams that are a little disappointed because they just missed out. These last two games for all these teams are extremely, extremely important. We’ll know more by the end of this weekend. We’ll have a pretty good idea of who needs to do what to get in and who’s going to be on the outside. It’s very interesting. You rarely see a situation where there are so few spots available. There is a chance that some of those two-loss teams that are in the top 13 could lose twice and slip back to that 6-4 mark, but right now I like their position. If you’re sitting at 6-2 right now, you’re in pretty good shape.”
“This week out of the area, the one game to watch is Coatesville against Downingtown West. Right now Coatesville is 6-1 at the 10 seed, and a lot of people would consider them a favorite if the tournament started now. It reminds me of the old North Penn days when they’d be seeded low and they’d win the tournament. Who wants to play Coatesville? Their only loss is to Harrisburg (14-6). It’s not like they haven’t handled the teams that they’ve played – they have. In most of their wins, they’ve scored 35 or more points. They have two tough games. This week’s game is at Downingtown West, and for Downingtown West, that’s their Super Bowl right there. That’s the game of the year for them. Coatesville closes the regular season with Downingtown East. I see these rankings shuffling a lot. Downingtown East is five. Garnet is always there, and they’re six. They’re always a good team. Just ask the SOL teams that have lost to them in the last several years. It’s just an interesting couple of weeks. When you look at it, CB South at 14 is tenuous. Haverford sits at 15, Pennsbury is 16, CB East is 17, Truman is 18 and Neshaminy 19. You’re going to see three probably upset that they didn’t get in there.”
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