State College rolls to dominating win over Mechanicsburg

The State College defense continues to be a force.

Mechanicsburg had nowhere to run – or throw – Friday night at Memorial Field in a 55-0 loss to the Little Lions.

“We couldn’t move the football,” Wildcats coach Chris Hakel said.

The Little Lions (4-0) have begun the season in decisive fashion, thumping their first four opponents by a combined 175-30. All of those wins have been against non-league foes, however, with the Mid Penn Conference’s Commonwealth Division play filling the rest of the regular season, starting with a trip to Carlisle next weekend.

“It feels great but we know the big games are ahead of us,” said senior Pete Haffner, who was frequently making tackles in the backfield while adding a pair of touchdowns on offense. “We’re not thinking about 4-0, we’re thinking about next week against Carlisle.”

Tristen Lyons also scored a pair of touchdowns as part of his 13-carry, 111-yard effort, and State College rolled up 193 yards on the ground as a team.

Kyle Snyder connected with Noah Woods for a score, backups Brady Dorner and Michael Misher hooked up on passing touchdown, Keaton Ellis returned a punt for a score and Noah Thies returned an interception 22 yards for a touchdown.

“Those guys fly around,” coach Matt Lintal said. “Our defensive staff does a tremendous job. Our defensive kids fly to the football. We’re really proud of their effort.”

Lintal’s defense was the beast of the night, however.

In addition to the pick-six score for Thies, the Little Lions held the Wildcats to 31 total yards, including minus-4 on the ground.

Mechanicsburg (0-4) had 32 plays on the ground or with a completed pass, and 15 of them were for zero or negative yards.

“Our D-line played phenomenal,” Haffner said. “They got penetration the whole game. We were playing a really aggressive style of play and we really made it a mindset this week to dominate the line of scrimmage and try to get plays in the backfield.”

The first half was especially bad for the Wildcats, whose longest play was for 14 yards, which earned them their only first down of the game.

State College held Mechanicsburg to a mere 16 yards of offense in the first half, including minus-18 rushing. That total included three sacks and nine tackles for a loss.

That effort helped overcome an extremely sloppy first half for the Little Lion offense. State College had six penalties, was sacked four times and turned the ball over twice in the opening 24 minutes.

But stuffing the Wildcats, with the help of some very short punts, made things extremely easy for State College. Nine drives started on the Mechanicsburg side of the 50 yard-line.

“We set up the offense with short field position,” Haffner said. “… The momentum kind of carried over to the offense. I think they kind of field the energy off us and we got things going.”

In contrast, the Wildcats ran just three plays on the State College side of the 50, never getting closer than the 44 yard-line.

The first three touchdowns were all four-yard runs, the first for Lyons in the first quarter, then the two for Haffner in the second. Snyder, who was 6 of 11 passing for 111 yards and an interception all in the first half, then connected with Woods on a 40-yard strike right before halftime.

Lyons added a 34-yard scamper, his only carry after halftime, in the third quarter to essentially make it a runaway.

Thies had his interception score early in the fourth. Dorner, a freshman, guided the offense for the touchdown strike later in the fourth, and just trying to run out the clock Ellis snared a short Mechanicsburg punt and took it 40 yards for the final score.

“We were very undersized,” Hakel said, “but I was proud of the way our kids competed, especially defensively.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2016 at 11:47 PM with the headline "State College rolls to dominating win over Mechanicsburg."