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Football: Richmond-Burton comeback falls short
Updated: November 25, 2011 10:53PM
CHAMPAIGN – It was strength against strength in the Class 4A state championship Friday night, and Rochester was just a little stronger than Richmond-Burton.
Rochester relied on a quick-strike passing game led by Oklahoma State-bound quarterback Wes Lunt and Zach Grant to build a 19-point lead and held on for a 42-39 win over feisty Richmond-Burton.
Lunt passed for 506 yards, 259 of them to Grant, and three touchdowns as Rochester (12-2) won its second straight Class 4A title. Lunt’s passing yards and Grant’s receiving yards were both title-game records for all classes.
Richmond-Burton (12-2) countered with a running game that produced 514 rushing yards, led by Jack Dechow, who ran for 244 yards and four touchdowns.
“We got it down to what we could and we just didn’t have enough time to win it,” said Jake Pauly, a two-way starting lineman for Richmond-Burton. “It was just back and forth, back and forth. I kind of expected that a little bit. ... It was a fun game to play in and I’d do it over again.”
Rochester seemed poised to pull away when it scored three touchdowns, one after recovering an onside kick, in a span of 1 minute, 42 seconds of the third quarter to go ahead 42-24.
“When we get going. we get going,” Rochester coach Derek Leonard said. “They fought and our kids fought and that was a once-in-a-lifetime game. So much stress there at the end – I’m kind of relieved we won.”
But Dechow had a 10-yard touchdown run (he earlier scored from five, 23 and 68 yards) and Brett O’Kane scored from 11 yards out to make it 42-39 with 5:51 left. Richmond-Burton got the ball back when O’Kane picked off Lunt (31 of 39) in the end zone with 1:17 to play. R-B got to the Rochester 37 before turning it over on downs with 13 seconds left.
“We weren’t sure if they’d be able to stop us and we weren’t sure if we’d be able to stop them,” Richmond-Burton coach Patrick Elder said.
Even when Rochester threatened to pull away, Elder didn’t waver from his run-first strategy. “We weren’t going to let them get us out of our game plan,” he said.
Morrison 23, Casey-Westfield 14
Danny Willis had two touchdowns, including the go-ahead score late in the third quarter, as Morrison (13-1) won its second Class 2A title in three seasons.
Willis scored on a two-yard run with 3:22 left in the first half and caught a 20-yard touchdown pass from Danny Dennehey with 2:39 remaining in the third quarter. That broke a 14-14 tie and Andy Schaver clinched it with a 27-yard field goal with 8:19 left. Casey-Westfield (12-2) managed just 102 total yards, 28 after halftime.
Dakota 41, Tuscola 27
Dakota (12-2) rallied from a 14-0 second-quarter deficit in the Class 1A final, getting four straight touchdown runs from Jake Apple (31 carries, title-game record 373 yards) en route to its third state title in six seasons. Philip Meyer (222 passing yards, 52 rushing yards) threw for two scores and ran for another for Tuscola (11-3).
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