Central Valley overcomes shaky start to ease past Mt. Pleasant in first round

By: Jim Equels Jr.
Friday, November 1, 2019 | 10:40 PM

The WPIAL Class 3A first-round playoff game between Central Valley and Mt. Pleasant was a contradiction of football fortunes.

Mt. Pleasant, the No. 8 seed on the tournament, was coming off a week in which its playoff fate hinged on the outcome of other games involving teams in its conference. Central Valley, meanwhile, was hanging 40-plus points on Aliquippa, arguably the most storied program in the WPIAL, a week ago. That performance earned the Warriors the top seed in the tournament, not to mention a No.1 ranking in the state.

Those contradictions were evident, and they added up to a sloppy but relatively easy 42-6 win by Central Valley on Friday night. The Warriors improved to 10-1 and advanced to next week’s semifinals, where it will meet Derry at a site and time to be determined. Derry defeated Beaver Falls, 28-27, in overtime

Mt. Pleasant had its season end at 5-6.

Central Valley coach Mark Lyons, while happy with the win, wasn’t thrilled with some early miscues that stalled the Warriors’ attempt at maintaining the momentum from last week’s win over Aliquippa.

“Our guys are going to have to learn from this,” coach Mark Lyons said. “Everyone might look at you as the favorite, but no one is going to hand you anything. You still have to go out and perform.”

Indeed, Central Valley was out of sync early, getting called for five penalties in the first quarter and throwing an interception early in the second. Despite the sloppy play, the Warriors still managed a 14-0 lead after a quarter, as Ameer Dudley threw touchdown passes of 21 yards to Michael Barbuto and 33 yards to Myles Walker.

“We’re not going to make any excuses. We didn’t have a clean start,” Lyons said. “But I give our guys credit. They recovered. Our leaders got us through it. We got things going when we needed to.”

Central Valley got its offense rolling late in the first half, and with it, its running game. Running back Jaylen Guy gave the Warriors a 21-0 lead with a 17-yard TD run before Stephon Hall scored on a 8-yard run. Dudley then induced the mercy rule when he literally walked into the end zone from 4 yards. Hall added another short TD run in the second half.

Lyons pointed to the play of Dudley as a key to overcoming its miscues.

“Ameer really has a handle on this offense,” Lyons said. “He knows where everyone needs to be and distributes the ball to the right guy. I know it’s cliche, but its accurate as far as Ameer is concerned. The game is really starting to slow down for him.”

“We tried to do our best, but Central Valley is such a talented football team,” Mt. Pleasant coach Jason Fazekas said. “Especially with this being a short week, it’s hard to prepare for everything they can throw at you.”

Central Valley’s defense was dominant, limiting Mt. Pleasant’s options offensively.

“We threw everything at them that we try to do offensively,” Fazekas said.

“I felt like our defense was locked in the entire game,” Lyons said. “Even with our early struggles, our defense wasn’t allowing them to get anything going while we got things back on track.”

Tags: Central Valley, Mt. Pleasant