CUMBERLAND — It was a clash of styles Friday at Greenway Avenue Stadium: Mountain Ridge’s short passing game vs. Allegany’s power run.
On that day, the passing attack won out.
Sophomore Carter Clites threw for 204 yards and two touchdowns to Eli Sibley, and No. 3 Mountain Ridge came back from a 13-point deficit to outlast Allegany, 24-21.
“That was a very hard-fought game by Allegany,” Mountain Ridge head coach Nathan Shipe said. “That was a great football game. They came out and started the game exactly how they wanted to. Grinding the football out.
“Extremely gutsy performance by our kids. … Even if it’s not pretty. Even if your offensive line doesn’t look good in the first half, turned the football over, dropped passes. Coming out with a win, that fixes a lot of hurt feelings.”
Mountain Ridge improved to 3-0 and pushed its winning streak over Allegany (0-3) to 10 games.
The Campers, who didn’t complete a pass, forged ahead to a 13-0 lead early in the second quarter, led 13-10 at the half and 21-17 late in the third quarter.
But Mountain Ridge followed Allegany’s final score — a 45-yard Aidyn McKenzie touchdown run with 2:54 left in the third quarter — with a four-play, 37-yard scoring drive set up by an Owen McGeady 46-yard kick return.
Clites threw up a jump ball in double coverage to Sibley, and the 6-foot-3 target came down with it for a 24-21 lead with 1:36 remaining.
“Eli is one of a kind for sure,” Clites said of his top receiving target, who caught a touchdown in the first half and has six through three games. “Over the summer, through our workouts, starting in March, we’ve developed a chemistry that is built on trust. If I throw it up, I trust he’s going to go get it.”
Allegany had two shots to offer a response. The first was stunted by a fumbled snap on a first down that put the Campers behind the sticks and ended with a punt.
Mountain Ridge was stopped on fourth down on its next series, and Allegany moved to the Mountain Ridge 24 on a 29-yard Khiante Bible run and jaunts of 19 and 11 yards by McKenzie.
However, a holding penalty and another botched snap exchange put Allegany in a 4th-and-15 situation, and the Campers couldn’t complete the first-down pass.
“That’s the type of game-plan that we should win with,” Allegany head coach Bryan Hansel said. “You rush for over 400 yards, that means you should probably win the time of possession and the game.
“Just in the second half, when we started to get things rolling, it was a dropped snap. It was a hold. You just can’t have those mistakes late in games. It seems like we just keep doing that. … I don’t know if it’s a fatigue thing or a youthful thing, but we need to clean it up.”
Allegany rushed for 421 yards on 56 carries and had a 27:40-20:20 edge in time of possession and 421-276 margin in total yards.
Mountain Ridge had the better field position, scoring on touchdown drives of 47 and 37 yards after halftime and starting another on the Allegany 31 late in the first half that ended with a 43-yard Tyler Cook field goal.
Cook was a weapon in the kicking game, putting four kickoffs through the back of the end zone for touchbacks to force Allegany to drive the length of the field.
Clites completed 19 of 26 passes for 204 yards and two touchdowns. Sibley caught nine passes for 58 yards and two scores, Owen Bannon had two catches for 57 yards, Owen McGeady made three receptions for 49 yards, and Kyree Griffin hauled in four balls for 44 yards.
Griffin added 60 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries in the ground game.
Allegany limited Mountain Ridge to just 15 yards rushing on eight carries during the first half and 72 on 17 tries for the game, but the Campers, playing man coverage on the outside, had little answer for the Miners’ quick passing game.
“When your running game is getting stuffed, you have to be able to do something else,” Shipe said. “Carter is a good thrower. Seeing the man coverage on the outside, we had to make a decision, we’ll take Eli Sibley and Owen Bannon and try to just throw it up and see if they can make a play. There were a couple times where they did.”
McKenzie had an explosive day for Allegany gaining 227 yards on 11 carries and scoring touchdowns of 83 and 45 yards. Bible added 98 yards on 14 tries, and fullback Jackson Resh gained 94 yards on 26 carries.
Quarterback Sebastian Stewart scored a rushing touchdown.
Mountain Ridge, trailing 13-10 at halftime, took the lead on its first possession of the second half when Griffin capped a six-play, 47-yard drive with a two-yard touchdown run with 7:21 left in the third.
Allegany used a long, methodical drive and a big play to jump out to a 13-0 lead.
The Campers were pinned down to the one-yard line following a pristine McGeady punt on their first series, and they drove 99 yards on nine plays.
Stewart plunged into the end zone on a quarterback sneak to make it 7-0 Alco with 3:36 to go in the first quarter.
After forcing another Mountain Ridge punt, Allegany needed just three plays to score again. On the third play of the series, McKenzie found room on the outside and cruised 83 yards for a touchdown.
Allegany’s lead stood at 13-0 with 11:47 left in the first half following a missed extra point.
Kain Sweitzer then forced a Mountain Ridge fumble, recovered by Rylen Ellsworth, to set up a short field at the Miners’ 40. That’s when the momentum swung in Mountain Ridge’s favor.
Mountain Ridge stopped the Campers on fourth down, and it capped a nine-play, 68-yard drive with a two-yard touchdown pass from Clites to Sibley to cut its deficit to 13-7 with 4:36 on the clock.
Allegany fumbled on its next possession on a muffed handoff on a criss-cross play, and Brody VanMeter recovered to give Mountain Ridge the ball on the Alco 31.
Cook knocked a 43-yard kick through the uprights with 1:34 remaining in the half to put the score at 13-10 Allegany at the intermission.
But Mountain Ridge outscored Allegany, 14-8, after halftime and notched two final stops to keep the Miners perfect through three weeks.
Allegany will try again for its first victory at Albert Gallatin (3-2) next week.
Mountain Ridge aims for a fourth straight triumph at Frederick (1-2).
“The kids expect to win when they step onto the football field,” Shipe said. “Being down 13-0, it would’ve been easy … to not work on coming back, not fight. I think that mentality was instilled under coach (Ryan) Patterson, and it’s carried over this year.”