KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Following last season's 55-27 loss at
Hutchinson (Hutchinson, Kan.),
Rockhurst (Kansas City, Mo.) football coach Tony Severino may have considered striking the delete button and erasing any memory of his team's visit to Gowans Stadium.
Rockhurst running back Noah Pearl rushed for 191 yards.
Photo by Dean Backes
Instead, he called Hutchinson athletic director Eric Armstrong and asked for a change of venue for the 2010 version of Rock vs. Hutch.
"We wanted to come back down here," Severino said following Friday's 29-28 overtime win over the six-time defending Kansas state football champion Salt Hawks. "I didn't want Hutchinson fans to think that that's the way we played (football). I just wanted to let them know that we play better football than that, and that we were sorry for the show we gave them last year."
Although his Hawklets didn't dish out the whopping margin of victory Hutchinson hit his squad with a year ago, Severino was happy getting a win any way he could in Hutchinson.
"We didn't exactly come out here and kill them," Severino said after his team improved to 2-0. "But 29-28 in overtime...we'll take it.
"I don't know how many of these one point wins I can take. But if we get 14 of them, we'll definitely take 'em."
Rockhurst's special teams got off to an inauspicious start, fumbling to Hutchinson at midfield on the opening kickoff. But the Hawklets held on downs at their own 26 and from that point on the kicking game became an ally for the visiting team.
Rockhurst, who knocked off Hutchinson 28-21 (at home) in the series' first game in 2008, converted on all three PAT kicks and blocked Travis Hirt's point-after-boot following Salt Hawk safety-turned-running back Ben Heeney's 1-yard plunge for a touchdown in the overtime frame.
Hawklet punter Eric Orscheln also stepped up, pinning Hutchinson at its own 2-yard line, just before Trey Randle sacked Salt Hawk signal caller Trevor Turner for a safety to open scoring in the first quarter. Hutchinson punt returners found very little running room throughout the contest.
"It always does. Literally it always does come down to the kicking game," Severino said of special teams being the difference in most ball games of this stature. "Coaches always blow smoke about special teams, but you gotta work on them. We work on them a lot.
"We have a great kicker - a great punter. We tell our kids that that's their role...that's what they do - and they have to do it well. We expect that out of them."
Hutchinson answered the Rockhurst safety by getting a 29-yard field goal from Hirt, giving Hutchinson its only lead in regulation, 3-2, with five minutes remaining before halftime. Heeney's 30-yard run to the Rockhurst 19-yard line set up Hirt's scoring opportunity.
Rockhurst's
Noah Pearl answered when the 6-foot, 193-pound senior running back capped an 11-play, 77-yard drive with a 16-yard run to head into intermission with a 9-3 advantage.
"Noah was a different guy here tonight than he was a year ago," Severino said. "Last year he ran a little more tentative.
"Noah Pearl did a great job and we got some great blocking from (tight end) Danny Tapko on the end. Our fullback Ryan Karlin was able to kick that outside guy out, so we really started to put things together."
Hutchinson averaged nearly 52 points a game a year ago, so trailing 9-3 at intermission was a little out of character for the Salt Hawks, who had a 22-game winning streak heading into the contest.
But Salt Hawk coach Randy Dreiling said his offense just needed some fine-tuning.
"We felt like we didn't capitalize on our opportunities," Dreiling said of his team's first half performance. "We missed three extra points and missed a wide open receiver.
"We knew if we made some adjustments we would be fine. We blocked well and started running the ball in the second half."
Pearl, who finished the night with 191 yards rushing on 24 carries, responded again early in the third quarter after Rockhurst recovered a Salt Hawk fumble at the Hutchinson 28. Two plays later, Pearl raced in from 24 yards out to put the Hawklets up 16-3.
Dreiling didn't appear to be too concerned.
"We have a little different mentality on the sidelines," Dreiling said in dealing with rare two-score deficits. "It doesn't matter if we're up by 60 points or down by a couple of scores. We try not to worry about it. We just try to go out and play good football.
"Heck, you can be up by 21 points in a game and not be playing very well."
Hutchinson did respond. Following a deep pass to Salt Hawk tight end Jerome Roehm, earlier in the drive, Heeney found pay dirt from a yard out to close Hutchinson to within 16-10.
Hutchinson's Ben Heeney (2) can't find much running room.
Photo by Dean Backes
Pearl and Heeney traded 3-yard scoring runs before Salt Hawk quarterback Trevor Turner closed out regulation with a 1-yard run to knot the score at 22-22 in the fourth quarter.
Rockhurst quarterback Frank Arbanas answered Heeney's overtime plunge with one of his own and Hawklet kicker Griffin Bins added the PAT to send the Hawklet sideline racing onto the field.
"It feels good to fight to the end," Pearl said of winning the classic grudge match with border rival Hutchinson. "We fight to the end and that's what we've been doing here every single game.
"This is a fun football game. Last year they beat us pretty bad and we had to come down here and prove to them that that wasn't us. That was not Rockhurst football, and that's what it's all about."
