Michigan high school football: Grosse Pointe South blows out rival North, 44-14
Grosse Pointe South senior quarterback Anthony Bernard will give you a dose of Johnny Manziel while mixing in a little Fran Tarkenton for good measure.
The “Riverboat Scrambler” was at it again Friday night throwing for four touchdowns and running for another while leading the visiting Blue Devils to a 44-14 football victory Friday night over rival Grosse Pointe North in showdown of Macomb Area Conference divisional champions.
Committed to play Division I basketball at Mercer (Georgia), the 6-foot Bernard’s athleticism was on full display as he proved to be instrumental in denying previously unbeaten North (8-1), the MAC Gold champs, the longest the Norsemen had gone unbeaten in a season since 1986.
South (6-3), the MAC White champs at 5-0, racked up its fifth straight win over North, which had been outscored by an aggregate of 178-3 against the Blue Devils in previous four meetings.
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The Blue Devils put the game away with a pair of TDs in the final quarter as Egan Sullivan (20 carries for 107 yards) scored on a 24-yard run with 10:53 to go followed by Bernard’s fourth TD pass of the game with 4:07 remaining to Brady Kennedy. (North got a 13-yard fourth-quarter TD pass from Daniel Taylor to Leo Pereitte.)
Bernard, who drove the North defense nuts with his scrambling ability, completed 10 of 20 passes for 156 yards and added 76 yards on the ground.
“It’s all ad-lib,” Bernard said. “Playing basketball really helps with that getting out of tight spaces and stuff like that. I don’t have to scramble all the time because our offensive line does a great job up front on most of the passes.”
Leading 14-7 at halftime, South scored on his first possession of third quarter on a 24-yard pass from Bernard to Sullivan, who caught the ball in traffic near the goal line and powered his way in with 6:56 left to go up 22-7.
“We just knew that we were better than what we came out with,” Bernard said of the opening half. “We just started out slow and we had a couple of drives stall out. Had to capitalize on some of the third downs and not put us behind the sticks.”
Sullivan also ran for the two-pointer after another North penalty on the extra point attempt. The Norseman aided South on the TD drive with a both a face mask and personal foul penalty.
After trailing 7-0 early, South was stymied offensively most of the first half, but got untracked and took momentum by scoring two late TDs.
The Blue Devils marched 80 yards in 11 plays for its first TD capped by Bernard’s 16-yard keeper to square it at 7-all with 1:35 left. South also got help on the drive thanks to a 15-yard face mask penalty.
On the ensuing kickoff, South’s Luke Wilson recovered a fumble at the North 23 and just three plays later Bernard pulled a Houdini, scrambling out of the pocket and side-arming a 21-yard TD pass to Cliff Grabowski in the end zone for another TD to make it 14-7 with 1:06 remaining.
“Broken plays ... those are heartbreakers,” North fifth-year coach Joe Drouin said. “We had it, and then they scored.”
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Bernard made something out of nothing on that TD passing play.
“We came out earlier, we had a lot of hype and adrenalin, kind of let that get to us and we started out slow, the play kind of broke down and I knew I just had to make the play and then I rolled out to the right and I saw Cliff got open,” Bernard said. “It was right in his hands and I just hit him.”
The Norseman, meanwhile, wasted little time scoring on their first possession, but couldn’t get anything going thereafter.
On the fifth play from scrimmage, Taylor hit P.J. Sorce in stride for a 44-yard TD pass with 8:31 left in the first quarter to stake Norseman to a 7-0 advantage following Kyle Armbruster’s extra point.
North wasted a 24-yard punt return by Drew Hill down to the South 17, only to come up empty after a drop in the end zone and a 15-yard holding call before coming up short on a 49-yard field goal attempt with 6:20 left in the half.
With 1:17 left in the opening quarter, the Norseman defense held inside the red zone after South marched down to the 8, forcing a 26-yard field goal attempt that sailed wide.
North, which last won in 2017, still leads all-time series 31-24, but penalties and turnovers killed a solid effort by its defense.
“If you look at the stats, we had the second-best defense in Division 3 going into the game,” Drouin said. “We had some penalties, we had some dropped balls and some things that didn’t go our way. It feels like always the story against these guys. That’s a good football team. We have to galvanize ourselves and move on to the playoffs.”
Meanwhile, it’s on to the postseason for both South, which is in Division 2, and North in Division 3.
South coach Chad Hepner, in his first year as head coach after serving 10 as defensive coordinator, liked way his team bounced back from a choppy start.
“We just couldn’t get going, give credit to North, they were doing some things that frustrated us,” he said. “We had that one drive in the second quarter where we really just started marching and putting it all together. And of course, he (Bernard) made a great play when he needed to.”
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan high school football: Grosse Pointe South tops rival North
