Mountain Ridge rushing game could be key to taking down Perryville

Nov. 26—FROSTBURG, Md. — For much of this season, there haven't been many questions about how much success Mountain Ridge's pass-heavy offense can have through the air.

Over the past two weeks, any questions about the run game have been answered, and the Miners (10-1) hope it can help their historic season continue against Perryville (7-4) tonight, 7 p.m., at Miner Stadium in the Class 1A state semifinals.

The winner of tonight's meeting will advance to the state championship game, which will be played Saturday, Dec. 4 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium against the winner of Fort Hill and Edmondson-Westside, who play tonight at Greenway Avenue Stadium. Kickoff at the state title game is slated for 3:30 p.m. Should the Miners come out on top this evening, it will be their first state title game appearance in the school's 14-year history.

After rushing for 15 yards as a team against Keyser in the regular-season finale, Mountain Ridge head coach Ryan Patterson wanted to put an emphasis on the run game. Over the past two weeks, the Miners have done just that, running for 524 yards in their two playoff games while throwing for 327 yards.

"There's a drill we just completed, I was thinking of running it today, but I asked myself, 'Are we doing something different?'" said Patterson. "It's called inside drill. We go tackle to tackle. We bring running backs in and we just isolate that area of the field. We've definitely put a more added emphasis on that in practice, but we've been running more exterior stuff as well."

Against Allegany in the co-region final, the Miners ran 35 times for 220 yards before bolting for 304 yards on 40 totes against Forest Park last week in the state quarterfinals.

A big part of that rushing attack is the play of Jaden Lee, who had 23 carries for 123 yards against the Campers and 25 carries for 179 yards and three touchdowns against the Foresters.

"He's been really good at finding that edge and finding that crease," Patterson said of Lee. "It's been something since the Keyser game where we said we aren't going to go as far as we want to go if we run 15 yards a game. And we figure we can stop the run as well, so we might as well run the freaking ball."

Mountain Ridge's opponent tonight, Perryville, is coming off a 14-3 win over Brunswick last week after running through the 1A East Region as the top overall seed.

"When I look at them, I think of a finesse team," said Patterson. "They run a ton of different plays with a Spread offense."

The Panthers' offense is led by Zack Clarke, who had a pair of touchdown passes last week against the Railroaders.

"They have a quick QB they run some Zone Read with," Patterson said. "He likes to hide behind that offensive line, which I'd say is average size, not too big and not too small."

In the backfield is Jaimere Guy, who can do some damage both on the ground and through the air. Last week, Guy was part of a group that rushed for 140 yards while also hauling in a 35-yard pass as the Panthers threw for 74 yards.

"I don't know how many yards he had, but he seemed to want to take the game over against Brunswick," Patterson said of Guy. "He's a slasher, likes to get north, puts his head down and gets what he can. It seems like he's got game-breaking speed as well."

Clarke has two favorite targets that he throws jump balls to in Caedon Kestner and Daniel Tserkis.

"I don't know how many catches he has on the year, but based on film I'd guess north of 50," Patterson said of Tserkis. "Super athletic kid, he looks bigger on film. The kids have dug up — good old social media — that he's 5-(foot)-10. But he does a nice job of boxing out and going up and high pointing the ball. He makes a ton of one-handed catches. I think he'll be the best wide receiver we've faced all season."

Kestner, 6-foot-6, hauled in a 23-yard touchdown pass over top of a defensive back last week.

Patterson said of Perryville's five touchdowns it has scored in the playoffs in two games — the Panthers, like the Miners, had a first-round bye — four of them have been on a jump pass, with Kestner and Tserkis hauling in two apiece.

A passing attack isn't unfamiliar territory for the Miners' defense, however, as they see it every day in practice and in a few contests this season. Patterson thinks all of that will help his defense tonight.

"Having seen some Spread offenses all over the place, not just in practice but in prep for Spread offenses, I think the terminology and components of gameplans have been compiled for this. They do have some tendencies, just like anyone else, that we'll try to play off of.

"Their QB does have me a little nervous running around. He's all over the place. That's a long time to track really good receivers, so I think that'll be a big part of the night if we can corral him and if we can stick with the wide receivers when he does break free."

Other than the Miners' lone blemish on the year, a midseason loss to Fort Hill, last week's 55-20 win over Forest Park was the first time a team has scored more than 13 points on the Mountain Ridge defense.

"We have put our secondary in a position where they're playing man-to-man coverage," said Patterson. If they can handle the back end, that allows another player up front since we play our safeties up close to the line of scrimmage. If we know you're running the ball, we're coming at you. He never gets the notoriety he deserves, but Jacob Wildeson, on both sides of the ball, controls things at such a high level. I'm going to put him in for Lineman of the Year. But our defense starts with him.

"And having Jaden Rosales back full-time, he's really back into full swing. This was a Roy DeVore thing from the Beall days, but some kids really come around in Frostburg when the cold comes around. I think that might be the case with Jaden. He can just be so dominant. I don't remember if it was the Keyser game or not, but he recently had five tackles in a game and they were all for a loss."

Another thing that has been helpful for the Miners is the JV football season being over, allowing some of the JV players to be called up to varsity, adding some depth and giving the starters a breather when they need it.

"We try to play so many kids and the JVs have come up as well, so we've had so many kids get into the game with rotations," Patterson said. "It has helped a ton. When we played Smithsburg, we had the JV game canceled that week, so we had the JV kids up and I thought that was our best game entering the playoffs."

Offensively, while the Miners have put an added focus on the run game, they certainly haven't shied away from throwing the ball downfield with quarterback Bryce Snyder.

The senior QB has double-digit completions in eight of 11 games this season and during the playoffs is 22 of 33 for 327 yards with four touchdowns and one pick.

Nathaniel Washington and Uma Pua'auli have been the top two targets over the last two games, with each catching three touchdown passes. Washington has nine receptions for 142 yards while Pua'auli has 10 grabs for 103 yards.

Tonight's meeting is a similar situation to what the Miners faced just under two months ago when a trip to Frankfort loomed. The matchup was one week before a No. 1 vs. No 2 showdown against Fort Hill. A win by the Sentinels and Mountain Ridge tonight would result in a rematch for all the marbles. While there didn't seem to be much of a feeling of his kids looking ahead to Fort Hill heading into the Frankfort game — the Miners dispatched the Falcons, 48-13 — Patterson was sure any of that talk amongst his team was nipped in the bud.

"Lots of questions this week about what we're going to do against Fort Hill the second time around if we both win, and I shut those down immediately. There's no looking ahead," Patterson said. "Our job is to not become complacent. It's tough to tell you since the beginning of the season if we've gotten better each week. But I can tell you over the playoffs, we have done that. But their job right now is to come out and take care of business Friday night.

"We've had some games and teams on our schedule, which everyone around here compares everything to Fort Hill, whether that's fair or unfair. But we've done a great job against a lot of the teams we've beat. We manhandled Catoctin who, even if they lost a lot from two years ago, there was still that defending state champion swagger about them. Both Alco games. The Frankfort game now, looking back, they were almost sniffing a state semifinal game. You look at last week with Forest Park, we knew we'd be up against all kinds of speed. The coaches came up with great gameplans. The coaches have done a great job with Adam (Patterson) running the defense and Sefa (Pua'auli) running the offense. How quickly these kids have picked up the gameplans has been so impressive."

Before the Miners write another chapter in their history book, a win tonight against Perryville is necessary, and Patterson knows it won't be an easy task.

"The number one thing I think is to corral that quarterback," Patterson said. "He's very athletic. Not a ton of size, but you can tell he's a gamer. He plays safety for them, kicks for them. With that, we need to stop that jump ball as well. That will be crucial.

"I think number two, we need to keep their running back from cutting loose. There's times you see him on film and think, 'Wow, if he can do that over an entire game, that's going to be troublesome.

"Lastly, if we can win the turnover battle, that will be huge. They turned the ball over five times last week. I just hope they saved some for us."

Kyle Bennett is a sports reporter for the Cumberland Times-News. Follow him on Twitter @KyleBennettCTN.