St. Joes Prep Puts Up 45 IN PCL Championship Win

Tagged under: District 12, Gameday Hub, News

Noah Stomsky | October 29, 2023

Pure Dominance, after a shakey first half SJP with only 17, Prep came out in the second half hot and ran the ball through the gut of Roman Catholic adding on 28 points in the second half. While both teams couldn’t move the ball much on offense with two over-the-head snaps from Prep and a Pick Six against Roman by Nick McGlynn, both offensives couldn’t do much. For SJP, Samaj Jones only completed 4/11 for 51 yards while Semaj Beals for Roman went 8/18 with 51 yards also. In the second half, Jones only threw the ball four times making him pass 15 times in the game, yet ran 17 times. While this may not excite the fans, Prep didn’t care.

“Yeah I would say it was a big turning point, I mean we came out, played really hard, I think that pick gave us like a lot of movement” Glynn said when talking about his first pick six.

“A lot of our problems that were brought to us in the first half were self inflicted wounds and it’s nothing that we cant correct you know it’s things that we penalize ourselves on the offense and it’s things that we can fix and that’s a great thing our coaches do preparing us and when that time comes we keep moving forward and getting better” Jones on the second half turnaround.

“The gameplan really was, if it’s broke dont fix it we gone try a little bit of both and you know what worked was staying on the ground so that’s what we went with and you know if they cant stop it why would we” Jones on being run heavy in the game.

In the first half for Prep, they ran the ball twenty-two times compared to their eleven pass attempts while for Roman, they ran seven times compared to their eighteen passes, two different offensives. On offense they were slow only finding the endzone three times, twice with Isaish West and once with Jones, the defense stood out with Glynn’s two pick-sixes, a stripped ball in the endzone for a touchdown, and a 28-yard field goal from Skyler Sholder. The dual-threat backfield between West and Kahseim Phillips combined for 195 yards in the game. For West, he ended the game with 10 carries, 94 yards for two touchdowns one of which was a 68-yard rushing touchdown and Phillips carried 10 times for 101 yards. The backfield complements each other really well. The third most dangerous runner came from Jones, who carried the ball seventeen times for 76 yards and the single touchdown. With the offensive struggles, the defense contributed as they could.

“I defintly underpreformed today, I could’ve done better, but it’s about perservering you know it’s not always gonna be a perfect game and I just stuck it through” West on his early struggles.

“We pride ourselves in being a bend but don’t break defense, that’s why we’re great. If we get pinned at the ten yard line and they’re like ten yards away from scoring, we still believe that we can stop them. We never give up and that’s what we pride ourselves on trust and love” Omillio Agard said when talking about defense.

“Every time we come out we try to play hard, you know push the offense. they came out slow and we just had to just play off that play for them even though they were coming out slow we just had to play hard” McGlynn said.

And Prep scores right away! A pick six by Nick McGlin for about 55 yards to give prep the early 7-0 lead with 8:29 in the first @PaFootballNews pic.twitter.com/mgmbPeNFd5

— Noah Stomsky (@NStomsky) October 28, 2023

@IsaiahWest_12 with his second of the day, a 68-yard rushing touchdown to add on to the Prep lead. 31-7 with 9:41 in the game @PaFootballNews pic.twitter.com/lFCOBxbDGu

— Noah Stomsky (@NStomsky) October 29, 2023

The only score of the day for Roman came off a two-yard rush from Dazhuan Hopkins halfway through the first quarter, after that they could not move the ball much farther. With the win, Prep captures another PCL championship and moves on to the playoffs. Winning the state championship last year they are favored to do it again. As they move on through playoffs the teams will just keep getting better and better. As Prep says, “It’s the most important game because it’s the next one”, they will keep hammering that quote going into the playoffs.

“Being consistent, only time we will lose is if we beat ourselves, so we just got to stay consistent and nobody can mess with us in the state” Agard on the challenges from now to the state championship.

“We just got to keep on executing. At the end of the day we got the weapons and we got the gameplan to do it. We just got to execute day in and day out we just got to get rid of those small mistakes that we were making today” West said when talking about the playoffs.