Allegheny to host red-hot Grove City today
Oct. 15—The Allegheny Gators are in the midst of a two-game slide and today's Week 7 matchup doesn't get any easier.
Allegheny, 2-4 overall and 1-3 in Presidents' Athletic Conference games, hosts Grove City at 7 p.m. The Wolverines are 5-1 overall, 3-1 in PAC action and boast a three-game winning streak.
Grove City has the most lethal offense in the PAC with an average of 43.7 points per game. The Wolverines can get it done on the ground or through the air. Their rushing attack has two running backs with more than 400 yards in Clayton Parrish and Nico Flati.
"They do a great job running the football. They have some big bodies," Allegheny head coach Rich Nagy said. "We need to utilize our ability to move a little bit to create some penetration and problems within their scheme. We need to force the running backs to find and pick holes where we want them to run so we have a better idea of where they're at and scrap and tackle better."
The Wolverines' passing attack runs through quarterback Logan Pfeuffer. The sophomore has thrown for 1,316 yards and 14 touchdowns this season, both are PAC-bests. Pfeuffer's favorite target has been junior wide receiver Scott Fraser. Fraser has seven touchdowns and 762 yards on 39 catches.
"We gotta keep eyes on their receivers," Nagy said. "They have some big receivers and we need to be able to be under and over them so to speak. We have a big task on defense to stop that run game and pass game."
Defensively, Grove City is also solid. The Wolverines' defense allows 15 points per game and less than 200 yards of total offense. Grove City also does a good job of creating turnovers with 12 so far this season.
Turnovers made a big impact in Allegheny's 35-21 loss to Geneva College last week. The Gators fumbled twice, had two interceptions and had some inopportune penalties.
"For whatever reason we've had problems with some illegal formations and it hurt us on Saturday. We were about to go in and score and go up 14-7 and instead we get kicked back to a fourth and 7. We tried a field goal, missed the field goal, then they scored three plays later so it shifted the whole momentum after that," Nagy said. "We gotta eliminate the turnovers or any self inflicted wounds right now on offense so we don't go backward."
Despite last weekend's loss, Allegheny's offense was effective at moving the ball. The Gators had 390 yards of offense and averaged more than seven yards per play.
For Nagy, the loss was about breakdowns in fundamentals, something the team focused on in preparation this week.
"I think we did a better job schematically with some things last weekend, but we still had interceptions, fumbles, missed tackles — those are technical and fundamental errors," Nagy said. "I think we do a good job with that stuff in practice, but we get to a game and it's not translating.
"We're not trusting it or not maybe we're not coaching it enough to give them enough confidence, it could be a million different things but that's been the theme this week. Just talking about how we gotta be better fundamentally and technically with what we're doing or the schematics won't make a big difference so to speak."
Alex Topor can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at atopor@meadvilletribune.com.
