Photo By Evie Stiner
By Matt Guear
A balanced offensive attack paired with suffocating play from the Susquehanna defense led to an all-around dominant effort to take down Catholic University by a score of 50-21 on Saturday at Doug Arthur Stadium in the first ever Landmark Conference matchup.
The scoring started early for the River Hawks. They received the opening kickoff and quickly stormed down the field. Sophomore quarterback Josh Ehrlich threw a quick pass over to junior wide receiver Kyle Howes who evaded a defender and snuck past the pylon for the score. Howes, who was quiet last week against Western New England, had a much better game, recording eight receptions for sixty-eight yards and two touchdowns.
“To have Kyle, I always know he’s open. Even when he doesn’t look open, he’s open, trust me,” said Ehrlich. “If you throw it out there, he’s going to get it.”
On the following drive, Catholic appeared to be driving down the field and were looking to even the game up. However, Susquehanna caught a break when Catholic quarterback, Madden Lowe, dropped the ball while dropping back to throw, and the River Hawks jumped on it.
Susquehanna was able to drive down the field again, with little resistance from the Cardinal defense. The drive was capped off when Ehrlich was able to thread the needle and find Howes in the endzone before he hit the turf to put the River Hawks up 13-0 after a missed extra point.
,Catholic’s lone score of the half came when Lowe connected with wide receiver Preston Jeffrey for a long 54-yard touchdown.
The lack of a run game for Catholic matched with Susquehanna’s great game-planning to counter the pass game made it very difficult for the Cardinals to get anything going offensively.
“We literally put a new defense in this week that we’ve had, but hadn’t installed,” said SU head coach Tom Perkovich. “Coach (Defensive Coordinator Pat Ruley) really did an awesome job of really limiting them. Just an awesome plan from our staff and great execution by our kids. (I’m) really proud of him for that.”
Susquehanna went into halftime, winning 19-7.
The Susquehanna defense didn’t give up a first down throughout the entire third quarter. Meanwhile, the offense put up 17 more points.
Both Ehrlich and Grabowski had rushing touchdowns. Grabowski had himself another great game, rushing for 109 yards on sixteen attempts, along with the aforementioned touchdown. This week marked the third straight week that Grabowski went over 100 rushing yards.
After three quarters, the River Hawks were up 36-7.
They pulled most of their starters heading into the fourth quarter, however, they kept scoring.
Perhaps one the most exciting plays occurred after a Lowe to Malachi Hansen touchdown pass.
Sophomore Dominic Winn returned the kick–off 94 yards to the house to put a stamp on the all-around dominant game played by the River Hawks.
As if that wasn’t already enough, first-year defensive back Xavier Maple recorded an interception for the River Hawks on the following drive that put a seal on the game.
“It was really good and, you know, a couple of things late that I really liked were the kick return and then that last drive for us after the pick, finishing that thing, I thought it was a good team game for us and I thought all three phases doing pretty well,” Perkovich said.
Susquehanna is back in action next week on October 7 at Keystone College and will return home to take on Wilkes University on October 21.