Waverly forced a pair of turnovers in the game’s last five minutes and added a late touchdown to beat Piketon 21-7 Saturday night.
“It was a great ball game,” Waverly head coach Rusty Wright said. “Piketon’s a very good football team, and they’re going to win a lot of football games. To win this game is really really big.”
The Tigers, playing in front of their home crowd delivered the first blow when quarterback Derek Roback rolled to his right and found Levi Underwood up the right sideline for a 52-yard touchdown connection less than four minutes into the game.
Underwood brought the fans to their feet with his early catch and made a play late to help send them home happy.
With the Tigers holding on to a 14-7 lead with less than five minutes to play, Piketon drove to the Waverly 27 before Underwood snagged an interception on a Jordan Miller Pass, giving the Tigers the ball with 4:16 remaining.
“Levi, he grew up tonight,” Wright said. “We kept telling him all last year that he’s a tremendous football player. He didn’t believe he was... He’s got skills. He’s got talent. He’s got speed and he’s just a tremendous football player. I think he believes it tonight.”
The Piketon defense held Waverly allowing their offense to re-take the field with 2:31 to play. But the Streaks fumbled on the drive’s first play and senior linebacker Rashaun Conley fell on the ball on the Piketon 32 yard line.
“We always have played good defense here,” Wright said. “We were very disappointed in the way we played defense last year. (My assistant coaches) spent a whole winter saying we’ve got to play defense and we’ve got to get back to playing defense the way we do.”
The Tigers sealed the victory two plays later when Kevin Malone scampered 30 yards for a touchdown.
The lone bright spot on the stat sheet for Piketon was running back Tyler Tackett, who accumulated 96 yards on 23 carries. He scored Piketon’s lone touchdown in an eight-yard run which capped a 17-play, 80-yard drive late in the second quarter.
That score tied the game with just over two minutes to play before halftime.
It took Waverly just 1: 30 to answer. After quickly driving to the Piketon 15, Waverly was pushed back courtesy of a sack and a fumbled snap.
Facing a third-and-26 from the Piketon 31, Roback’s prayer was answered when Jake Kretzer snagged his pass in the corner of the end zone to give Waverly a seven-point halftime lead.
Roback threw for 167 yards and a pair of scores in the contest. Kretzer had 60 of those yards while Underwood led the Tigers with 78 receiving yards on just two catches.
CHRIS DUNHAM can be reached at chrisdunhamjr@aol.com
Piketon 0 7 0 0 — 7
Waverly 7 7 0 7 — 21
FIRST QUARTER
W — Underwood 52 pass from Roback (Roback kick), 8:17
SECOND QUARTER
P — Tackett 8 run (Leist kick), 2:10
W — Kretzer 32 pass from Roback (Roback kick), 0:33
FOURTH QUARTER
W — Malone 30 run (Roback kick), 2:06
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
PASSING — Piketon: Miller 3-7-2 36; Waverly: Roback 1-6-0 167.
RUSHING — Piketon: Tackett 23-96, Miller 16-47, Southworth 1-8, McDowell 1-0; Waverly: Malone 16-74, Underwood 5-48, Roback 11-(-7)
RECEIVING — Piketon: Southworth 3-25, McDowell 1-13; Waverly: Underwood 2-78, Kretzer 3-60, Malone 3-19, Tackett 1-10.
Records — Waverly 1-0, Piketon 0-1
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