No Jaydakis Scott, no Rashon Crenshaw, no Dietrick Roberson on hand – and still no way that the Liverpool football team was going to see its Section III championship dreams ruined by its rivals from Cicero-North Syracuse.
For the second year in a row, the Warriors turned back the Northstars in the opening round of the sectional playoffs, doing so this time by a 29-12 margin Friday night at LHS Stadium with big plays from previously unheralded players who had to step up with much of Liverpool’s starting backfield unable to play.
From Donovan Card to Daryl Nixon, Matt Rioux to Jonah Harder, Jordan Caviness to Zach Khatib, each of these Warriors made key plays to build a 22-0 lead by the third quarter, something from which C-NS could not recover.
“They had the opportunity to step up like we know they can do,” said Liverpool head coach Dave Mancuso. “Our kids did an outstanding job.”
C-NS truly believed that it had closed the gap with its neighbors in the six weeks since it lost, 38-7, to the Warriors on Sept. 11 at Bragman Stadium. It quickly found out, though, that a different Warrior lineup didn’t translate into something inferior.
On its opening possession, Liverpool, with Caviness under center, gained big with long runs from Card and Rioux, moving it all the way to the Northstars’ three-yard line, from which Audey Ashkar scored the game’s first touchdown.
Trailing 7-0, C-NS countered with an impressive march of its own to the edge of the Liverpool goal line late in the first quarter, mostly on runs from Drew Flack. But in a three-play sequence, all of the game’s momentum swung toward the Warriors.
On fourth-down-and-goal from the five, Conner Hayes threw to the end zone – and Joe Scro picked off the pass, returning it to his own 18. Then, on the first play of the second period, Nixon took a screen pass from Caviness, sprinted down the sideline and cut back up the middle until he was in the end zone.
That 84-yard sprint by Nixon was barely digested when Liverpool lined up for an extra-point kick – only to have Harder, who was the holder, step up and pass to Khatib for two points, which made it 15-0, where it remained until halftime.
Taking the second-half kickoff, the Warriors needed just three plays to further extend its lead. Caviness threw 51 yards to a wide-open Mike Cutrone that put Liverpool on the C-NS 16. On the very next play, Card sprinted in for six points.
While all this was going on, Liverpool’s defense remained the tough, efficient unit that had baffled C-NS earlier this fall, not surrendering a point until, trailing 22-0, the Northstars finally got on the board with a third-quarter drive that Flack capped off with a four-yard run.
But C-NS missed the two-point conversion, and with Caviness and Rioux alternating snaps, the Warriors promptly answered with a 70-yard scoring march that consumed five minutes of clock and ended with Caviness sending a screen pass to Nixon, who caught the ball just before it bounced on the turf and then ran 17 yards for his second TD of the night.
Though Flack found the end zone on a one-yard plunge with 8:26 left, C-NS again missed a two-point attempt, and Khatib’s interception with 4:10 to play sealed another Warrior trip to the sectional semifinals at the Northstars’ expense.
Khatib paced Liverpool’s defense with nine tackles, three of them solo. Augie Holekamp had seven tackles, with Merrell Whitehead and Jamie Gadaleta each getting six tackles. Caviness completed 10 of 13 passes for 194 yards, with five of those passes going to Nixon for 114 yards. Card had 99 rushing yards on 19 carries.
Liverpool is retracing its 2014 journey to the Carrier Dome and the sectional final. Now, as then, it had to beat C-NS, and now it will again face Baldwinsville (6-2) in the AA semifinals this Friday at 8 p.m., and again it will take place on the C-NS turf, with the prize a spot in the Dome Nov. 7 against CBA or Utica Proctor.
B’ville topped Rome Free Academy 31-13 in its opening-round sectional game, and is bent on payback, remembering how it lost a tough 7-0 battle to the Warriors in this same round a year ago. Mancuso said that, regardless of if Scott or other players return to the lineup, Liverpool can’t take the Bees for granted.
“Whether Jaydakis is there or not, if we don’t bring our ‘A’ game, we will lose,” said Mancuso.
