STATE COLLEGE — The State College football team went to its default offense early and often during the Little Lions’ exciting 35-28 victory over talented Harrisburg on Oct. 21.
That offense is simply called, “Give the Ball to Pete Haffner.”
With the Cougar defense taking away the outside run and their withering pass rush seriously hindering the Lions’ air attack, State College turned to Haffner. Often.
The 6-foot-1, 220-pound senior fullback and linebacker ran the ball 35 times for 188 tough and mostly straight ahead yards and three touchdowns.
Haffner’s last touchdown, a 1-yard plunge with just 1:38 left to play, broke a 28-all tie and gave the Lions their eighth win of the season without a loss. It also kept the Lions ahead by one game in the race for the Mid-Penn Colonial championship.
Nonetheless, the win was not secured until the final seconds against a physical and well-balanced Harrisburg team that is stocked with D-1 talent.
“I’m so proud of these guys,” State College coach Matt Lintal said. “Talk about staying together no matter what’s going on, through the ups and downs, they stay together and never quit. The effort they show when we’re up, when we’re down, they always believe.
“That’s a great Harrisburg football team that’s got a chance to go win the state in 5A, and we’ll be cheering for them. We have a lot of respect for them.”
The first time Harrisburg touched the ball was evidence enough to the home crowd at Memorial Field that the Cougars came to play. They took the opening kickoff and drove 65 yards in just three plays, culminating with a 48-yard touchdown strike from quarterback Yahmir Wilkerson to Ronald Kent just 76 seconds into the game.
State College took the following kickoff and went nowhere, and it wasn’t until the Lions’ second possession that Haffner began to take over.
After a Harrisburg punt, SC went 94 yards in 11 plays to tie the game at 7-7. Haffner ran the ball nine consecutive times during the drive, which set up a wide-open, 20-yard touchdown pass from Tyler Snyder to Brandon Clark just as the first quarter was coming to a close.
“Our offensive line has developed so well,” Lintal said, “so we can establish that (running) part of our game and try to pound it. Then we can take our shots when it’s appropriate and when we have a high percentage. And it paid off here tonight.”
Harrisburg shook off the Clark score and responded in kind. The Cougars took the kickoff and drove 80 yards in just six plays for the go-ahead touchdown.
Wilkerson completed two big passes to standout receiver — and reported potential Penn State recruit — Shaquon Anderson-Butts during the march.
The first was for a 12-yard first down, and then on the very next play, Butts broke away for a 51-yard bomb down to the SC 2-yard line. From there, Wilkerson took it in.
Neither team threatened again in the first half, and for the second time in three weeks, the Little Lions were behind at halftime.
Apart from the 94-yard touchdown drive, State College was otherwise held to just 24 yards of offense in the first half. The Lions punted three times, and Snyder threw a second-quarter interception.
That all began to change after the break. SC drove 80 yards after the second-half kickoff in 11 plays to tie the game at 14-14. It was a mirror-image of the first scoring drive, with Haffner carrying inside for most of the yardage and then Clark coming open in the endzone for a 15-yard touchdown.
The tying score seemed to energize the Little Lions and, in quick succession, they scored twice more to take seeming control of the game with a 28-14 lead. Haffner did the honors on both, the first from 12 yards out and the second from the wildcat formation at the goal line.
“I love the wildcat formation,” Haffner said. “It’s my favorite. We call it the bear package, get the big boys in and just go after it.”
With SC now ahead by 14, and the fourth quarter beginning, anyone who thought Harrisburg would go quietly away would have been very wrong.
The Cougars, with Wilkerson going almost exclusively to his four-man receiving corps, engineered two quick drives that produced touchdowns barely three minutes apart.
Wilkerson scored the first on a 1-yard run to make it 28-21, and then he tied it with a 12-yard pass to Butts with 6:46 still showing on the clock.
To make matters worse, the Cougars’ defense subsequently stopped State College and forced a punt. So with four minutes to play and all the momentum on its side, Harrisburg took over the ball at its own 22 with designs on setting off on the winning drive.
State College defensive back Paul Olivetti, after seeing Wilkerson passes all night, had other ideas about that happening. Olivetti stepped in front of a first-down Wilkerson pass and made a clutch — maybe game-saving — interception at the Harrisburg 26.
Six plays later, all Haffner runs, SC was in the end zone with the winning touchdown. Haffner capped it from inside the one, again out of the wildcat.
“That was huge,” Lintal said about Olivetti’s pick. “Such a momentum change. Obviously they had a lot of momentum after those two touchdowns, and to get that pick was just huge.
“They (Harrisburg) were throwing to spots all night, and Olivetti saw that and jumped the pass.”
Still, with just 1:38 left, Harrisburg was not done, but the clock would eventually run out on the Cougars.
They drove all the way to the SC 12-yard line after Butts caught a pass on a third-and-long. But the clock was running down to the final seconds, with no timeouts, and Wilkerson ran up and spiked the ball. But it was fourth down, and the ball went over to the Lions to run out the final two seconds.
“Our kids were backed off defending that third down play, and they knew if they held them up, it would be tough to get off another play.
“So, once again, so proud of our guys,” Lintal said.
State College now has two games remaining on its schedule. Friday, the Little Lions travel to Chambersburg, and then the regular season comes to an end with a big showdown against Central Dauphin on Friday, Nov. 4, at Memorial Field.
