Football teams from Fayetteville-Manlius and Christian Brothers Academy each put up big point totals on their respective home fields Friday as the regular season passed the midway point – but only one of them won.
The Hornets mostly paid for ill-timed mistakes in a wild 45-42 home defeat to Baldwinsville, while the Brothers roared past previously unbeaten Nottingham 57-6 to set up a first-place Class AA-1 division showdown with 4-0, state AA no. 12-ranked Liverpool next Friday night.
In F-M’s case, it simply had no answer for B’ville’s potent running attack, led by Ryan Ingerson, who gained 318 yards and scored three touchdowns.
Right from the outset, it was clear that the momentum B’ville gained eight days earlier when it rallied from a 26-point deficit against Auburn to claim a 50-45 victory had not dissipated.
Jack Buis struck first, going 47 yards for a TD on the Bees’ opening possession. Ingerson began to take over a few minutes later with a 71-yard dash deep into F-M territory that set up Buis for a one-yard scoring run that gave B’ville a quick 14-0 edge.
But while the Bees were moving the ball at will, so were the Hornets, who struck for a pair of TD passes by both of its quarterbacks to Fernando Johnson – Henry Josephson for 69 yards, Jared Shaw for 29 yards – that bridged Ingerson’s 12-yard scoring run early in the second quarter.
A Hornets fumble set up Ingerson’s third TD, a seven-yard run, before the Hornets pulled within 27-21 on Shaw’s five-yard scoring pass to David Stegemann with 1:02 left in the half.
But that was enough time for the Bees to answer in two plays – both runs by Ingerson. One covered 20 yards, and the other went 40 yards to the end zone. Combined with a two-point pass to Dwyer, it restored B’ville’s margin to 35-21 as they went to halftime.
Still red-hot, the Bees struck again early in the third period, Ingerson going over the 200-yard mark with a 28-yard run that set up Dwyer to score from two yards out.
Trailing 42-21, F-M did cut the margin again with Kyle McGee’s two-yard TD run, but hurt itself again with a pair of turnovers as Madison Wolfanger intercepted a Shaw pass deep in Bees territory and recovered a fumble early in the fourth quarter.
From there, B’ville used up nearly five minutes of clock driving inside F-M’s 10 before Dwyer converted on a 25-yard field goal with 6:30 left, which made it 45-28 – but it still wasn’t over.
Following a quick Hornets drive, McGee hit on a four-yard TD run with 3:56 left, and after forcing a three-and-out, the Hornets marched again to Shaw’s 14-yard scoring run with 57 seconds left. Dwyer recovered the ensuing onside kick, though, and B’ville held on.
No one needed to hang on at CBA, where the Brothers treated 3-0 Nottingham in the same manner as it did to Corcoran a week earlier, meaning that, in the last two games, the Brothers have outscored its Syracuse city foes by a combined 119-12 margin.
Perhaps what made CBA mad was surrendering a first-quarter touchdown on Jevon Jones’ 68-yard pass to Sharrod Adams. From that moment forward, the Brothers’ defense took away the Bulldogs’ big-play ability and would not allow a point the rest of the night.
That defense also scored its own TD when Noah Jordan-WIlliams picked up a fumble near the Nottingham goal line and waltzed in for the score late in the second quarter, which helped CBA go to halftime holding a 28-6 advantage.
On special teams, CBA got a pair of touchdowns. Taking the second-half kickoff, Jordan-Williams found a seam and was gone, 75 yards to the end zone. The Brothers also had a blocked punt that Matt Vavonese returned back for six points.
The Brothers got the lead thanks to scoring runs of 15 yards from Stevie Scott and 14 yards from Gavin Collins, with Scott adding a second-quarter TD. Sirvocea Dennis found the end zone on a 20-yard run in addition to his defensive duties.
While CBA has its big test at Liverpool, F-M makes its own road trip to face 0-4 Auburn, who after the stunning B’ville comeback fell to Cicero-North Syracuse 44-20 a week later.
