By MIKE GENET

Hopewell-Loudon burned Columbiana 12 seconds into the game.

BASCOM — If, as Columbiana coach Bob Spaite said afterwards, the Clippers had to play a perfect game to possibly beat top-ranked Hopewell-Loudon after a three-hour road trip Friday, consider the possibility for victory vanished before the game was a minute old.

Chieftain quarterback Tyler Brown, on the other hand, already was on his way to possibly the best performance of his two-year starting career.

Brown hit Andrew Brickner for an 80-yard touchdown on the first play from scrimmage, the beginning of a 416-yard passing night that carried Hopewell-Loudon to a 41-14 home win in the Division VI Region 21 quarterfinals.

The Chieftains (11-0) get a second-round game next Friday with Mogadore, a 30-14 winner over Leetonia, at a site to be determined.

Hopewell-Loudon opened with a five-receiver set, and Columbiana had no deep safety. Brown, who clicked on 23-of-33 passes with four touchdowns, gave a little pump fake, then threw to Brickner, who had a step on Grant Crider, in stride over the middle. Jay Yost’s first of five extra points came just 12 seconds into the game.

“We knew they could do that,” Columbiana coach Bob Spaite said. “We’ve gotta do what we do [defensively]. We went through every defense.

“[Brown] is the best Q [quarterback] I’ve run up against us.”

As if the opening touchdown wasn’t enough for the Clippers (7-4), Josh Harold fumbled away the ensuing kickoff and H-L’s Tyler Ardner recovered at the 36.

Hopewell-Loudon got a fourth-down conversion before settling for Yost’s 22-yard field goal at the 8:56 mark.

But after forcing a punt Columbiana punt, H-L shrugged off a holding penalty and drove 83 yards in 10 plays. Brown hit Yost for 37 yards to the 5, and Brickner took an inside screen pass the next play for his second touchdown.

“You couldn’t ask for a better start, obviously,” Hopewell-Loudon coach Brian Colatruglio said. “They had a lot working against them, with the long trip and playing in an unfamiliar place.

“I think that we knocked them back on their heels, and they were kind of shell-shocked for the first half. We knew they weren’t gonna roll over.”

Brown’s 2-yard touchdown run capped an 11-play, 70-yard drive in the second quarter. In the final minute of the quarter, Columbiana’s Tyler Dejong threw incomplete four straight times from his own 42.

Hopewell-Loudon took over with 18 seconds left, enough time for Brown to complete passes to Brickner and Miles Chapman and set up Yost’s 37-yard field goal.

Columbiana came in averaging more than 260 yards on the ground, and while it finished with 296, just 69 of that total came in the first half. On their other possessions, the Clippers went three-and-out and lost a fumbled snap.

Hopewell-Loudon had 312 yards in the first half, including 254 courtesy of Brown’s arm.

“We knew we had to play a perfect game,” Spaite said. “We knew we had to control the football, and we couldn’t do that in the first half.”

Columbiana did gouge H-L’s defense after halftime, as Brian Warchol finished with 141 yards, including two TD plunges in the third quarter, and Dejong slipped through on several keepers to add 137 yards. But Warchol lost two fumbles in H-L territory in the fourth, one of them at the 5 when he broke a 31-yard jaunt.

Hopewell-Loudon also had quick responses to the Columbiana scores. Its first play of the second half was a dart from Brown to Brickner that went for 50 yards, and three plays later Brown tossed a 6-yard score to tight end Matt Bouillon.

Brickner finished the scoring by taking another inside screen 34 yards with 1:20 left in the third. The play capped a career night of nine catches for a school-record 228 yards.