Football Preview: Springfield Tigers vs. Lowellville Rockets
Two dominant backs in Dante Gentile and Geno Perry are getting ready to go toe-to-toe. The Springfield Tigers will be playing in front of their home fans against the Lowellville Rockets at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. Springfield will be looking to extend their current six-game winning streak.
Springfield's offense will try to repeat the strong performance it gave on Friday, when they got past McDonald's usually-dominant defense. Springfield claimed a resounding 40-0 win over McDonald at home. Considering the Tigers have won five games by more than 21 points this season, Friday's blowout was nothing new.
Gentile continued his habit of posting crazy stat lines, rushing for 187 yards and two touchdowns while picking up 7.8 yards per carry. His rushing production has been exceptional recently as that marked his eighth straight game with at least 115 rushing yards dating back to last season. Another player making a difference was Joey Centofanti, who rushed for 58 yards and a touchdown on only five carries.
Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask Lowellville). They took down Waterloo 56-40 on Friday. The victory made it back-to-back wins for the Rockets.
Perry was his usual excellent self, rushing for 282 yards and four touchdowns while picking up 10.4 yards per carry. With that strong performance, he is now averaging an impressive 2.1 rushing touchdowns per game. The team also got some help courtesy of Ricky Willrich, who threw for 291 yards and two touchdowns on only 18 passes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the score, Lowellville was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 309 rushing yards. That's the most rushing yards they've posted since back in November of 2023.
Springfield's victory bumped their record up to 7-2. As for Lowellville, they are on a roll lately: they've won three of their last four matches, which provided a nice bump to their 6-3 record this season.
Things could have been worse for Springfield, but things could have been a whole lot better as they took a 27-13 loss to Lowellville when the teams last played back in October of 2023. Thankfully for Springfield, Michael Ballone (who rushed for 146 yards and two touchdowns on only nine carries, and also threw for 194 yards and a touchdown) won't be suiting up this time. Will that be enough to change the final result? There's only one way to find out.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
