Princeton – A year after Herbert Hoover tyrannized Princeton in the trenches to the tune of 262 yards rushing and ending their season in the Class AAA semifinals, the Tigers returned the favor.
Class AAA No. 2 Princeton asserted its dominance with 307 yards rushing, 202 in the second half, en route to a 41-35 victory over the No. 7-rated Huskies in the Class AAA quarterfinals Saturday evening at Hunnicutt Stadium.
The win sends the Tigers to the Class AAA semifinals for the third consecutive year where they’ll face Spring Valley next week at a time and date to be determined on Sunday.
Trailing 21-14 at the half and absent of any momentum, Princeton head coach Nate Tanner, as he has all season, adjusted and took to the ground. But it was receiver Brad Mossor, who scored five times and picked up 244 yards from scrimmage, moving to the backfield to terrorize the Huskies.
“If you looked early in the first half we were able to establish the run,” Tanner said. “I thought (QB) Chance (Barker) was really efficient in the passing game and I felt like we were able to do both. But there were two drives prior to halftime – obviously the last one we had to hurry up and I think we had 1:20 to score and got it down to the 1 and didn’t score but the drive before that we were running the ball like we were but got out of a rhythm and had a few penalties and had to punt.
“The momentum had shifted there but going into the halftime the biggest adjustment was getting the whole program’s demeanor from down here to back up here. What I tried to do was give everybody perspective about what was going on and what we could still do coming into the second half. And boy our kids did that. I feel like the offensive line and our H-back position and running the ball, that was the edge that we had this evening and we were able to do that in the second half. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
The opening drive of the third quarter set the tone and flipped the game entirely. That trek, which spanned 80 yards and required 19 plays, was comprised of 14 runs plays with the first eight coming on the ground but ended with an unlikely aerial strike.
After a pair of sacks forced the Tigers into a fourth-and-16 from the Hoover 20, quarterback Chance Barker dropped backed, extended the play and lofted the ball in the back left corner of the end zone to a crossing Mossor for the tying score.
“I called a four-vertical pass play expect I made a little adjustment in the huddle before we went out there. I had our Z receiver run across the field in case they just sank and they did somewhat do that but Wyatt (Cline) was able to pull the after and pull the corner a little bit and Brad, where we were in trips to the other hashmark Chance scrambled and they just kept fading to the corner and Chance put it up and Brad made a wonderful play.”
“We had two guys on (Mossor),” Hoover head coach Joey Fields said. “We were going to keep the rest of the guys in front of the chains which we were able to do all night. But Mossor made plays like he should and he has all year. We had our best player on him and some help so I thought when that ball went to him, I said, ‘Thank you!’ because I thought we had two guys on him but that’s just a guy making a play.”
The play was just the first of several back breakers that Fields and Co. had to contend with in the second half.
Tied 21-all tie in the fourth quarter, Princeton’s Brady Cline intercepted Hoover QB Peyton Grigsby on the sideline at the Hoover 38. Three plays later Mossor found the end zone on an 8-yard rush, breaking the tie for good. But the dagger came on the ensuing kickoff when the Tigers forced a fumble that was recovered by Jake Belcher on the Hoover 25.
Once again it was Mossor twisting the knife with a 15-yard scoring run with 7:07 to play.
“We wanted to (run it on them),” Mossor said. “All week long I talked about wanting to punch them in the mouth. Every time they did it to us, I wanted to do the same thing to them. I didn’t really care about the passing game, I just wanted to punch them in the throat.”
Hoover cut the deficit to a score once again when Grigsby connected with Aiden Hernandez for a 51-yard touchdown pass with five minutes to play but Mossor answered with a peace sign to the defense at the end of a dagger 29-yard touchdown run, his fifth score of the night with 1:22 to play,.
“I said I hadn’t really said much,” Tanner said of drawing motivation from last year’s trench struggles against Hoover. “But yesterday at practice we watched some film and that’s what it was all about. I wanted to challenge the kids but at the same token let them know what they were and coming into the game I told our kids ‘Last year you got punched in the mouth and you didn’t have a sense of urgency about you but the beauty of it is Hoover hasn’t played this team yet.’ I feel like our kids really responded to that and they played with a big sense of urgency tonight and I feel like they were really, really physical and violent. They accomplished the objective at hand.”
Much like it did for Hoover a year ago when it held Princeton to 31 yards rushing on 21 attempts, the trench battle on the opposite side of the ball favored the Tigers who held the Huskies to 0 yards rushing in the first half with a trio of sacks propelling that total.
The Huskies finished with 70 yards on 19 carries, 30 of which came on one play on the final drive with under a minute to play.
“I thought our box kids did a fantastic job,” Tanner said. “Shoutout to Hoover’s staff. I thought they did a really good job dialing up some trick plays in an opportunistic situation and it was able to keep them alive and get some points on the board. The Grigsby kid, he’s tough back there and he’s fast and he can make plays with his feet. They’ve got a lot of receivers but any time you can make a team left-handed and they can’t run the ball it’s hard for an opponent to win.”
Hoover scored again with under a minute to play but an onside recovery by the hosts sealed the deal.
It was a total tone shift from the first half which saw Hoover score three times – twice on a pair of Grigsby touchdown passes to Lance Williams and Blake Fisher and once more on a direct snap to Fisher. Thye went from leading 7-0 to trialing 14-7 and eventually leading 21-14 at the break.
The Tigers accumulated both of their first half scores on the ground on a 5-yard run by Jake Belcher and a 6-yard tote by Mossor. But the visitors were never able to recapture that form following halftime and a Princeton third quarter drive that 9:39 off the clock.
“We made some mental miscues there constantly, but you’ve got to go respond, ” Fields said. “Again it’s a four-quarter, three-phase game against two good teams and you’ve got to go respond but we didn’t respond very well. But we’ve got a lot of young guys that were asking to do a lot.”
Mossor finished with 24 carries for 148 yards and four touchdowns, hauling in nine passes for 96 yards and another score. Barker completed 13 of 21 passes for 178 yards and touchdown. Alex Cox joined Mossor with 116 yards rushing on 12 carries.
Grigsby finished with 231 yards passing to go along with four touchdowns and an interception while Fisher scored three times.
About the Author
