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Saucon Valley takes care of business vs Wilson Area

Tagged under: District 11, Gameday Hub, News

| September 9, 2023

Hellertown – In their home opener, the Panthers of Saucon Valley left little doubt from the start.  Wilson received the opening kick and quickly went 3 and out.  The Panthers took over and proceeded to drive right down the field and capped it off with a swing pass from QB Peter Albano(6-9, 61 yards, 3TD) to WR Jack Robertson(5 rec, 49 yards, 3TD, 1 Return TD) to put the Panthers up 7-0 early in the 1st quarter.

After another stalled drive by the Warriors, the Panther’s Jack Robertson inserted himself once again in to the stat sheet with a punt return for a touchdown to increase the Panther lead to 14-0 in the first quarter.

This concluded the scoring for the first stanza and as the 2nd quarter got underway the Warriors started what ended up being their steadiest drive of the game  with QB Jeramy Cressman completing a few quality passes downfield only to have their drive interrupted by an errant throw and interception by Saucon Valley’s Andrew Gilbert.

After another drive was stifled by the suffocating Panther’s defense, Wilson punted and Saucon Valley drove right down the field and scored on a direct snap to Jared Rohn ( 12 rushes, 160 yards, 1 TD) from 23 yards out with 9:34 left in the 2nd quarter to put the Panthers up 20-0 after the hold on the extra point was mishandled.

The Saucon defense once again did their job and got the ball back for their offense who marched down the field and added to their lead with a short pass from QB Peter Albano finding his favorite target on the evening, WR Jack Robertson, to extend the Panther’s lead to 27 after the extra point.

The score would remain unchanged through the rest of the 2nd quarter and the teams headed in to their locker rooms at half with the score Saucon Valley 27, Wilson Area 0.

The start of the 2nd half saw more of the same for the Warriors and Panthers with Saucon corner Andrew Gilbert(2 deflections, 2 Int) intercepting QB Jeramy Cressman  on a 4th and 5 near midfield and returning it all the way to the Warrior 7 yard line, setting up Saucon with a golden opportunity to increase their lead.

The Panthers wasted little time on this drive with QB Peter Albano once again finding Jack Robertson on a quick screen pass to put Saucon up 34-0 over the Warriors.

Then with just under 6 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, the Panther’s Constantine Donahue (3 rushes, 26 yards, 1 TD) (who was denied an earlier touchdown due to a holding call) took a direct snap around the right side of the Panther line and put Saucon Valley up 41-0.

The 4th quarter saw Saucon bring in their second string players to give their starters a well deserved rest.  The Warriors to advantage of that with WR Rodney Bronson taking a short dump off pass the distance from deep in their own territory to avoid the shut-out vs Saucon.  Their 2-point attempt was successful and with 6:04 left in the game, Wilson trailed Saucon 8-41.  This long run-after-catch score by Wilson concluded the scoring for the evening.  The final from Hellertown, Saucon Valley 41- Wilson Area 8.

After the matchup I was able to get a few words from Saucon Valley WR Jack Robertson who had a huge evening for Saucon Valley. When asked about the change in offensive attack with going to the air more vs Wilson than previous games he said “We like to change it up a bit. We’re trying to change the culture here and do whatever we need to do to win games. We watched film and we studied and we thought we could come in to this game and pass and that worked out well for us.”  When asked about his punt return for a score tonight he stated “Yeah, I caught the ball clean, and I just have to give credit to the other guys out here, I went the entire way untouched and got some perfect blocks down the sideline”.

After finding Robertson, I was able to get some words from Saucon Valley Head Coach Anthony Brinkley who when asked about his team’s offensive attack and game plan versus Wilson Area he said “We want to keep running the ball, we have a lot of good athletes and we have a lot of ways to get them the ball. We look at all the ways we can get our skill guys the ball in space so they can make plays, spread the wealth and make defenses make plays and make tackles in space.  I think we did a good job of that tonight.”  When asked about his ability to be able to play a bunch of underclassmen to finish out the game he said, ” Yeah, that’s awesome for our guys, we weren’t able to have a JV game last week and we will be unable to have one again this week.  We’re able to get those guys a lot of valuable reps.  For a lot of them it was their first time under the lights, playing on a Friday night, you could see so of the confusion that comes with that with some of them, but they did a great job, kept competing, kept fighting. The varsity guys on the sideline were excited to see them out there and that goes with what we’ve been preaching about staying connected and doing the right thing.”

Next week, Wilson Area(0-3) heads to Lehighton(1-2) who are coming off a 28-7 defeat at the hands of the Pottsville Crimson Tide(1-2) and Saucon Valley(2-1) travels up to Bangor(2-1) who will be looking to rebound after a lopsided 6-47 loss to Southern Lehigh(3-0) this week.

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