Discipline, focus pay off for Penn Hills in playoffs

By: Josh Rizzo
Saturday, November 9, 2024 | 11:01 AM

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The Penn Hills football team was focused on the task at hand during the first round at the WPIAL playoffs.

The Indians have attempted to stay with that line of thinking all season. When things break down or go awry, Penn Hills wants to maintain a simple mantra: Do your job.

The seventh-seeded Indians, who were scheduled to play Upper St. Clair in the quarterfinals Nov. 8 in a game too late for this edition, needed that type of focus to survive a first-round test from 10th-seeded Moon. The Indians overcame a 13-point deficit to march into the next round with a 30-27 win.

“We stayed disciplined,” defensive back Darrell Banks said. “They wrote on the board at halftime everything we needed to do. We needed to stay disciplined. If we do our job, the game’s going to be in our hands.”

Penn Hills (7-4) was eliminated in the playoffs last season after a late lapse against Pine-Richland did them in. The Indians were woken up immediately by Moon. The Tigers scored on an 80-yard run by Braeden Stuart on the first play of the game.

Moon scored 20 points in the first quarter. That wasn’t a recipe for Penn Hills finding a way to win a football game.

Indians coach Charles Morris said Penn Hills had to adjust to Moon’s misdirection heavy running game.

“A lot of our preparation is based on formation,” Morris said. “We have to make sure we align correctly. We can’t control who they are going to give the football to. We can only control what we do and our execution. We need them to read their keys, fly around and tackle.”

Naytel Mitchell led Penn Hills with 250 rushing yards and scored three times. The Indians running back/linebacker also led the team in tackles.

Mitchell said he needed to be willing to make bigger hits against Moon.

“We had to be more physical at the point of the attack,” Mitchell said. “For me, personally, I was trying to be too finesse. When I started hitting them, I started blowing it up.”

Teammates followed Mitchell’s lead after Moon took the lead, 27-23, with 8 minutes, 44 seconds remaining on a 1-yard run on fourth-and-goal by Andrew Cross. On the next drive, the Indians gave the ball to Mitchell twice.

The first carry went 11 yards. Mitchell’s second carry ended up with him racing 69 yards for the game-winning touchdown run just 40 seconds after the Tigers had regained the lead.

“(Mitchell) screamed at me all week, ‘Coach, give me the football. I am going to help us to win,’ ” Morris said. “He sure enough did that.”

Tags: Penn Hills