SCARBOROUGH – While they are still alive in the hunt for a spot in the Class A West football playoffs, the Scarborough Red Storm have their backs against the wall.
Scarborough (2-4) has lost its last three games and has dropped to 11th place overall in the Class A West Heal Point standings. With just two games remaining in the regular season, on the road against No. 4 Thornton Academy (5-1) this Saturday and a season-ending road game at No. 9 Gorham (3-3) on Oct. 21, the Storm will have to win both and hope for some help from the teams above them if they want to slip into the postseason.
“I’m pretty sure we do (have to win the rest of our games to make the playoffs),” Scarborough Head Coach Lance Johnson said. “I know that we have a tough schedule, but I don’t think the way things are looking that three wins is going to get you in. So we’ve got two left and we’ve got to win them both.”
Last Thursday night, Scarborough had a solid chance to make up some ground in the postseason race as the Storm gave No. 3 Deering (5-1) everything the Rams could handle before falling 14-7 in the final home game of the season.
After the first two drives of the game, it appeared that Deering was going to have an easy time with the Red Storm.
The Rams scored two quick touchdowns in the first quarter to take an early 14-0 lead over Scarborough, and it appeared that the rout was on. But the Red Storm dug in their heels the rest of the way and kept the Rams off the scoreboard, playing the Rams hard until the end of the game before coming up just short of the upset win.
Johnson said he wasn’t surprised with the intensity of the matchup with the Rams. “We knew it was going to be a battle, and it was from the get-go,” Johnson said. “Once we settled down on defense, it was kind of back-and-forth, (seeing) who’s going to break first and we just couldn’t get it done, we had our chances.”
Scarborough got strong performances from Dillon Russo, who split time at quarterback and running back, Connor McCann, who had a big interception and Ben Greenberg, who came in at quarterback and keyed a big drive that ended in the Storm’s lone score.
After the game, Johnson praised Russo’s effort in the dual role as quarterback and running back as well as noting his strong play on defense. “He’s a competitive, competitive, tough, tough kid,” Johnson said. “He just played hard, and he’ll do whatever we ask him to do and he just works real hard at it.”
Johnson also noted that he intended on bringing in Greenberg at quarterback in an effort to spur the Storm’s ground game. “The game plan going in was to play Greenburg some at quarterback,” the coach said. “And use Russo more as a Wildcat type of quarterback and use him as a tailback. We’re just searching for some backfield help.”
After going down by two touchdowns, the Red Storm clamped down on the Rams keeping them off the scoreboard the rest of the way. Johnson said a defensive adjustment in the first quarter led to the change in momentum. “We just switched up what we were running,” Johnson said. “We went from an even front to an odd front, our kids are a little bit more comfortable in that. It’s a little bit harder to cover in that, but we were able to do that too. We just made a couple of adjustments, and the kids responded really well.”
After getting the defense settled, the Storm’s offense went to work. Scarborough crawled back into the game with an 11-play, 61-yard drive that was capped with a 10-yard touchdown pass from Greenberg to Dave Conceison that made it 14-7.
Scarborough was able to move the ball throughout the rest of the contest, but couldn’t punch it in, with one drive ending with a Deering interception in the end zone. “We had field position, we played good defense, we kept punting the ball deep to them and we thought sooner or later we’d get one to get it tied up and see what would happen.” Johnson said. “But we just couldn’t make a play when we needed to. We made a couple of red zone stands and we were able to keep them off the board after those first two drives, but we just couldn’t inch back into the game.”
Scarborough’s Dillon Russo celebrates after the Red Storm scoredSend questions/comments to the editors.
