Rovers, Patriots prove they still play defense in the LVC

FROM KEITH GROLLER

There have been some amazing offensive spectacles in the Lehigh Valley Conference this football season.

Many of them have involved Central Catholic and Nazareth, but across the board scoring seems to be way up.

Nazareth 31, CCHS 30.

Parkland 63, CCHS 40.

Easton 34, Whitehall 33.

Liberty 35, Parkland 28.

Nazareth 42, Liberty 41.

Those are just some of the more high-scoring games.

But Easton and Freedom showed that this league's roots in tough, hard-nosed football hasn't been totally lost.

I witnessed a real, tough, hard-fought football game on Friday night at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium that fittingly went to overtime and was decided by a couple of nice defensive plays by the the Red Rovers.

This one had more punts (14) than any high school game I've covered all season.

Freedom, actually, deserved a better fate considering that the Patriots hurt themselves with two 15-yard penalities and a couple drops of potential interceptions on Easton's lone scoring drive of the game.

The other Rovers score came off a fumble return of 80 yards. Eddie Elliott, back in action for the first time after missing seven games with a foot injury, fumbled the ball at the Easton 20 and Ian Hayden went 80 yards the other way for Easton's other score over the first 48 minutes.

The Rovers did miss two field goal tries, including a 19-yarder that was blocked by Julian Hill in the final minute of regulation.

The bottom line is that this was more like what we're used to around here -- tough, physical, hard-hitting, get-after-them style football.

And Easton, even in what is supposed to be a rebuiding year, is right back in the mix, right back in the hunt for the LVC championship, even when you thought the Rovers were out of it at 2-2.

It wouldn't be a Lehigh Valley high school football season unless the Rovers were hitting somebody hard.

That should be another dandy game at Cottingham Stadium on Friday night, one of the area's most-played rivalry games -- Liberty vs. Easton for what I believe is the 96th or 97th time.

The truth is all six of the LVC's -- Nazareth, Whitehall, Easton, Liberty, Freedom and Parkland deserve to make the District 2-4-11 subregional. It's a shame that one or two will not.

So, fans had better enjoy Nazareth-Whitehall next week and Liberty-Easton because there may be just a few terrific matchups left.

As for me, I enjoyed this one and hope to get to see some more good ones in November (next week I will be in upstate New York for the Lehigh-Colgate game).

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One quick note, I made two mistakes in my Easton-Freedom story in some print editions. I had Okezie Alozie misspelled in some editions and also misidentifed the Easton pass catcher on a 60-yarder late in the game.

It was Shane Simpson of the Rovers making the key grab. Not Zachary Olah. I credited Simpson in the stats, but not in the story.

I apologize for those mistakes. Okezie Alozie is always going to be a problem for me, much like he's a problem for opposing defenses. The other was writing 8 instead of 18 on the play-by-play sheet.

The mistakes were cleaned up for the online version.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/2011/10/rovers-patriots-prove-they-still-play-defense-in-the-lvc.html