Mercer slips past Linesville, 32-31

Justin Angermeier, Wes Schaa and Andrew Erdos played well to engineer the win.

By BILL ALBRIGHT

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

MERCER, Pa. — The numbers indicated two even ballclubs when Mercer and Linesville kicked off their District 10 Region 1 game Friday night.

Both teams were 4-1 overall and 3-0 in the district.

After 48 minutes, the final score was almost as close, with Mercer emerging on top, 32-31.

“Wow, what a football game,” Mercer coach Pat McClearn said. “If you would have told me after the Farrell game that we would have one closer than that one, I would have thought you were crazy. That was a heckuva game.”

Although the win puts Mercer in the driver’s seat in the conference, McClearn is looking at that position with cautious optimism.

“You can’t convince me that this was for all of the marbles,” he said. “We have Conneaut Lake and Lakeview to play. We have some good teams left on our schedule. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Linesville coach Pat Gould felt the mistakes by his team in the second half were instrumental in determining the final outcome.

“I thought both teams played a marvelous game,” said Gould. “We had some mistakes here and there and obviously they did too.

“What really hurt us is that our mistakes really amplified in the second half. We put ourselves in a good position like second-and-five and then we have a couple of penalties. If you expect to win, that just can’t happen.”

As has been the case in many of Mercer’s wins, it was the outstanding play of Justin Angermeier, Wes Schaa and Andrew Erdos that led the way.

Angermeier was tough on both sides of the line of scrimmage, with 178 yards on 30 carries and a pair of touchdowns, and 11 tackles (which included three sacks and two tackles for loss) on defense.

“It was hot and humid and I got winded early in the game, but I just tried to run as hard as I could,” Angermeier said. “But it wasn’t only me.

“Our [offensive] line is just amazing. They are well-coached and tonight, they just blew people off the ball.”

As for some extra incentive, Angermeier remembered last year.

“It was a big night for us because we got crushed in our homecoming game last year,” Angermeier said. “We definitely wanted to make a statement because this is the first time we were playing for something big this late in the season.”

Erdos only threw eight passes, but he completed five of them for 174 yards and a pair of scores, one to Mike Peters on a deflection from Schaa good for 62 yards, and the other to Schaa covering 43 yards. Schaa caught four passes for 112 yards.

“Wes just makes huge catches in clutch situations,” McClearn said. “He has stepped in real nice for us this year and Andrew [Erdos] had the one interception, but other than that, I thought he did a great job of reading the defense.

“He had a couple of big runs where they were committing to Justin [Angermeier] and he was able to get on the corner. He had a great game for us tonight.”

Linesville drove inside the Mustang 20-yard line before the Mercer defense stiffened on fourth down, and from there, the Mercer put on a drive to the Lion 1-yard line that took 17 plays and consumed almost eight minutes.