Division I powers face off

WARREN -- The last time Warren Harding and Lakewood St. Edward met on the football field, there was a chill in the air.
On an autumn night last season, Fawcett Stadium in Canton was overcome with cold November temperatures and a playoff atmosphere.
The Raiders were eager for a return trip to the Division I state championship game, where they lost to Cincinnati Elder the year before.
St. Edward stood in their way again -- so did 13 penalties and three lost fumbles -- as the Eagles ended Harding's season with a 21-13 victory in the regional semifinals.
And now the two unbeaten teams meet again Saturday night at Mollenkopf Stadium.
Coach's impressionof opponent
"They're a veteran football team, and they appear to be better than they were a year ago," said Warren Harding coach Thom McDaniels of a St. Edward team ranked second in the state and seventh in the Midwest by USA Today.
"That's certainly going to be a tall mountain for us to climb, and we're going to have to get a lot better in five days to handle what St. Ed's is going to give," McDaniels said. "They deserve the ranking they have."
Harding and St. Edward have gotten to know each other well over the past few seasons.
Before losing last season's playoff game, the Raiders had beaten St. Edward in regional semifinal games in 2001 (42-26) and 2002 (18-16) and in a 2003 regular-season game (27-20 in overtime).
"We've established a little something here," McDaniels admitted of the rivalry. "We're probably going to have a big crowd, and I imagine it would be the game of the week in Ohio."
Raiders survivea close call
This weekend's game may have lost some of its luster had Harding fallen to Cardinal Mooney in their Steel Valley Conference opener Saturday night at Mollenkopf. Instead, the Raiders won 22-20.
Why did Harding fall behind 14-6 at halftime, causing its fans to grow impatient with moans and groans?
"That's an unusual offense that we're not going to see very often, perhaps not again this year," McDaniels said of Mooney's stacked-I that rolled through the Raiders defense. "It probably took us a half to adjust to the stacked-I."
After that, the Raiders erased both their penalties and their deficit, holding off Mooney's surge in the final minute, as time ran out on the Cardinals at Harding's 26-yard line.
"We had a lot of unforced errors, and we self-destructed a lot in the first half -- dropped passes and miscommunication," McDaniels said. "We had a pretty composed halftime. We came out and played -- up until the very end -- a really good second half. Then it got chaotic again."
Rewind ofclassic game
Senior quarterback Kyle McCarthy engineered a 12-play drive that ended in his 5-yard touchdown run. However, Harding stopped McCarthy on a two-point conversion run to keep the 22-20 lead.
Desmond Marrow then recovered Mooney's onside kick at Harding's 48-yard line with 43 seconds to play.
Mooney coach P.J. Fecko took the blame for a third-and-4 call from Harding's 23 in the waning seconds. On a quarterback keeper, McCarthy was stopped short of the first down, and with no timeouts remaining the Cardinals were forced to rush their field goal unit onto the field.
"We had enough time to kill the clock. Unfortunately, the down and distance caught us," Fecko said. "We were trying to get it down a little bit closer, and we knew we had two plays left. The decision didn't work out."
Mooney was whistled for an illegal substitution penalty, and when officials spotted the ball and restarted the clock with one second remaining, the Cardinals had run out of time -- leaving us with a game that will stick in our mind.
XBrian Richesson covers prep sports for The Vindicator. Write to him at richesson@vindy.com.