Don’t talk about “time of possession,” the smart guys tell you, it’s the most meaningless of all football stats.
But not always. Not Friday night in Park Hills where the homestanding Class 5A Colonels of Covington Catholic took the ball from Beechwood’s Class 2A Tigers and wouldn’t give it back. Until they kicked it off. After a touchdown, usually.
And yeah, you heard that right. The team with the state’s longest winning streak, 27 in a row, would have needed some of those helium balloons that folks attach to their cars in giant parking lots to pinpoint their location just to let you know they were still out there on Wooten Field — although not necessarily still in the game.
Because the stats show that they were not. They show a CovCath team, 4-1 now, that was much more physical on both sides of the football. And with a working game plan that produced a 31-14 win that wasn’t as close as that score.
How about this for an indicator.
CovCath junior tailback Owen Leen, 5-foot-8 and 170 pounds, carried the ball 37 times (for 150 yards) all by himself. The entire Beechwood team, with Mr. Football candidates Mitchell Berger and Antonio Robinson Jr., ran just 34 plays.
“I’m definitely undersized,” said Leen, who also caught four passes for 27 yards. If you’re doing the math, that’s 41 plays for Leen, 34 for Beechwood.
You want yards? How about 177 for Leen, the little guy lined up behind 6-4 quarterback Evan Pitzer, against 117 for the entire Beechwood offense.
And now for the stat that really did matter. No, not CovCath’s 342 yards of offense to Beechwood’s 117. Or the rushing totals: 186 yards on 49 carries for CovCath to Beechwood’s minus-18 on 12 carries. That’s an average of minus-1.5 yards a carry for the Tigers who were playing with an offensive line hampered by injuries on the right side.
Nor will we mention that the Tigers’ big three – Berger, Robinson and quarterback Cash Harney – all finished with averages under-water. Berger had six carries for minus-one yard, Robinson one for minus-three and Harney, five for minus-14.
But forget those, here’s where you can see exactly what happened here. Check out the time of possession totals. CovCath had the ball for 34 minutes and 55 seconds. Beechwood? A mere 13:05.
And as much as we’d like to put this on the little guy Leen, we can’t forget his much taller classmate, quarterback Pitzer, playing with a big brace on his left knee. Yeah, the same guy in the photo on crutches at the end of the CovCath-Dixie Heights game last Friday with an MCL (medial-collateral ligament) knee sprain. When did he learn he was going to be able to play in the big game?
“Not until today,” Pitzer said. That’s when he was medically cleared. But surely, he’d take it easy on that knee, wouldn’t he? He would not. Twelve times he took off on that knee, for 36 yards. That’s a plus-54 compared to Beechwood’s minus-18. Add to that 11-of-14 passing for 156 yards.
“No sir,” he said when asked if the game plan was cut down to protect him. Not even a little bit.
“He played great,” Beechwood Coach Noel Rash said as he digested his team’s first loss in three seasons.
“There’s no way to go but up,” Rash told his team. “We gotta’ get better. We’re all in this together. We’ve got to handle this and handle it right.”
“Yes sir,” the Tigers responded.
But no need to tell CovCath’s Colonels anything of the sort. They’d already handled things right. “Our coaches did an amazing job,” said another junior, two-way wide receiver/defensive back Braylon Miller, who was excited about the challenge of going against Robinson, the transfer from Florida and the second-ranked college prospect in Kentucky. “I’ve never gone against a four-star before.”
But Miller made a four-star move of his own on his 13-yard third-quarter TD that saw him make one athletic move to get open then another to get his toes down in the end zone as the Tigers tried to defend him but had no chance.
Was that his best ever move? “It’s one of them,” he said, “but there should be more to come.”
And yet Miller knew his job was easier on both sides of the ball, especially on defense, because of the guys on the line. “Our D-line did an amazing job,” he said.
“They did a great job up front,” CovCath Coach Eddie Eviston said. “Since Week 1, they’ve continued to grow.” Since Week 1, they’ve had to.
In Week 1, they had to come out strong the second half against Cincinnati Elder, Ohio’s No. 3 team, or get blown away. And so they did. That continued through the Pikeville, Lexington Catholic and Dixie Heights games. A case could be made that any one of those four teams were better than any team Beechwood had faced, with Simon Kenton without its star quarterback last week.
It wasn’t a perfect game. After punting away from Robinson a couple of times, the Colonels kicked off to him in the second quarter. Big mistake. For the one and only time in the game, the speedy Robinson, a Wake Forest commit heading to college after the first semester, promptly took it 95 yards for Beechwood’s only TD until just 5:11 was left in the game.
That tied it at 7-7 but two more CovCath scores before halftime put this one out of reach. Leen powered in from the 3 to get CovCath on the board. But it was Pitzer with a quarterback sneak and then Willie Rodriguez, on a nine-yard pass from Pitzer, who put this game out of reach by halftime as CovCath just held on to the ball.
Miller’s score and a final 33-yard field goal by Andrew Weitzel, despite a low snap with the ball sideways on the ground when kicked, finished off the CovCath scoring while a Harney-to-James-Cusick 39-yard go route put up Beechwood’s second score.
“This is why we play the game,” Rash said. “You gotta’ turn it into a positive.”
For CovCath, it was already a positive. “We like to play a good schedule,” Eviston said, “and we work ‘em hard.”
“I’m just happy the way we executed,” Leen said of a Colonels team that committed just one penalty for six yards.
“Coach (Eviston) preaches confidence,” Pitzer said. “The coaches put in a great game plan.”
So was the big story here the Beechwood loss – or the CovCath win?
“That’s your decision,” Rash said when asked the question.
It was both, to be honest.
Score by Quarters
Beechwood 0 7 0 7 14
Covcath 0 21 7 3 31
CovCath: Leen.Owen 3 yd run (Weitzel,Andrew kick)
Beechwood: Robinson,Antonio 95 yd kickoff return (Berger,Mitchell kick)
CovCath: Pitzer,Evan 1 yd run (Weitzel,Andrew kick)
CovCath: Rodriguez,Willie 9 yd pass from Pitzer,Evan (Weitzel,Andrew kick)
CovCath: Miller,Braylon 13 yd pass from Pitzer,Evan (Weitzel,Andrew kick)
Beechwood: Cusick,James 39 yd pass from Harney,Cash (Berger,Mitchell kick)
CovCath: Weitzel,Andrew 33 yd field goal