By BRIAN SMITH
Sports Editor

 DEFIANCE — The white jerseys were muddied to the point that numbers neared indecipherability.
Not that the numbers mattered.

The St. Marys defensive front eight looked like one unit moving on the ball, splashing up water to coat the early-season Cinderella in sod.

Where last year the Bulldogs sliced through the Rider defense, Travis Spitnale was devoured in the backfield. Where Adam Wagner made big plays with his feet on crucial downs in 2007, St. Marys had Defiance quarterback Jordan Gonzalez running through the muck for his life on Friday night.

On a muddy, sloppy field over an hour north of home, St. Marys’ defense stood alone in a battle of previously Western Buckeye League unbeatens — last year and the year before avenged.

St. Marys snapped a two-game losing streak to Defiance with a 20-6 win on Friday night to go to 4-0 on the season and 3-0 in the WBL.

“I think especially on the defensive side our kids did a nice job,” St. Marys coach Doug Frye said. “I’m not sure our offensive line always matched up with their defensive line, but I thought our defense did a nice job tonight.”

And there was no doubt whose defense came out on top. Defiance entered the contest statistically the best in the WBL — giving up just 10.7 points per game.

Meanwhile, what looked like a preseason strong point in St. Marys was in question after three weeks. The Riders had only flashes of defensive greatness, on a late goal line stand against Bath and in the second half against Celina.

Friday night was the Riders’ masterpiece.

They held the Bulldogs to under 250 yards offense, under 70 rushing, and forced three turnovers that turned into all 20 of the Riders’ points.

“Turnovers are always big in any game and especially in a game when you have two evenly matched teams like this,” Frye said. “I thought we put our best effort together tonight.”

Defiance head coach Jerry Buti said there was no doubt which was the better defense when the night ended.

“If you’re going to be a defense that people talk about, ‘Hey, you guys are great on defense,’ then you go in and you stop them,” Buti said. “Okay? You go and you stop them. So when you want to talk that our defense is really good, until you stop St. Marys’ offense, don’t talk about your defense being good. A great defense would have gone in and stopped them.”

The Riders had a shutout going until midway through the fourth quarter when a double reverse pass for 70 yards put Defiance on the board. The rest of the night, Defiance was left scratching its head.

“I don’t know what they did to us, but it worked,” Buti said. “They certainly were tough against the run tonight. We didn’t look like a team that’s good at running the football tonight. They handled the conditions better than we did. We said going in, with it pouring down rain that you can’t turn the ball over and you have to play field position. We didn’t do either one. Give St. Marys credit for that. St. Marys’ defense stung us. It was a play here and there and we couldn’t sustain anything. I was impressed with their defense. They played really well. They played their best defensive game of the year, I’ll guarantee you that.”

St. Marys’ passing game took the forefront offensively when the running game wasn’t clicking as usual.

Jake Taylor went 8-for-14 for 121 yards and three touchdowns through the air to lead the Roughriders offensively on a night that the Bulldogs’ front seven demanded a pass to beat it.

“I just think they had eleven guys stacked six yards within the ball,” Frye said. “So they were kind of forcing our hand. We didn’t have much of an option. We probably should have done it a little bit earlier. Under normal circumstances we wouldn’t have been so reserved about it, but it was so wet I wasn’t sure how we’d be able to execute that. We were just a little bit hesitant because it was so wet out.”

Forced decision or not, Taylor was impressive at making reads and not making mistakes on a night that Defiance turned the ball over three times and the Riders had just one fumble in the soupy conditions.

Not that the Riders didn’t tempt fate before they took a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.

St. Marys watched a fortuitous bounce off a fumble turn into six points in a matter of two plays. St. Marys fullback Jeremy Frey streaked through the line on a trap for nine yards and appeared to be headed for more when the ball was knocked loose from his arms at the Defiance 30 yard line. The ball spurted forward on the wet turf and was knocked forward for ten yards before St. Marys guard

Justin Felver fell on the ball at the Defiance 20-yard line.

Armed with luck on its side, the Riders went for the jugular on the next play.

Taylor found Tyler Menker streaking open on a route down the middle seam of the Defiance defense. Menker caught the ball in stride, bounced off a Bulldog and clod into the endzone for a 19-yard touchdown for the lead. The extra point made it 7-0.

Taylor’s arm was the story of the offensive side of the ball. Little by little, St. Marys’ attack has gone from monolithic to downright efficient through the air.

“They threw the ball well and we were impressed with that,” Buti said. “But we’ve seen that happen before, so that’s no surprise to me that they could throw that way. We thought we were athletically good enough to cover that. We didn’t do it and they hit a couple of big plays.”

St. Marys appeared to be heading for another score late in the second quarter. On third and nine from the Defiance 40-yard line, Taylor found Cory Dammeyer wide open down the seam. Dammeyer hauled in the pass and brought it down to the Bulldog six-yard line. The connection went for 34 yards and set up a first and goal with 1:40 left in the half.

But the Defiance defense held tough, stuffing Frey and then Homan twice. On fourth and goal from the four, Doug Frye decided to go for it. Taylor scrambled left and appeared to find Cody Martin in the back of the endzone. But the pass was hot, hitting the top of Martin’s fingertips and going up in the air. Martin recovered to catch the ball, but only after his feet were out of bounds.
Defiance’s defense held the lead at 7-0 at the half, and Buti thought that could have been a momentum changer in the game were it not for the Rider defense and special teams pinning his team back.

“We were stuck on our end of the field,” Buti said. “We couldn’t get out. Then the other team gets a lot of shots at your defense. We played with our back to the wall the whole game.”

St. Marys turned a Defiance fumble midway through the third quarter into a two-possession advantage. After a fumble in the backfield that Adam Lininger recovered, St. Marys took eight plays to score on a third down inside the Defiance ten yard line. Taylor found Frey on a screen pass. He broke two tackles and rumbled into the endzone for the 13-0 lead. Chaz Adkins’s kick made it 14-0 with 4:52 left in the third quarter.

St. Marys tacked on a third touchdown with 11:49 left in the game, when Taylor put up a fade for wideout Paul Lauth, who ripped the ball away from the Defiance defender in the left front of the endzone from 15 yards out to make it 20-0. The extra point was no good.

Defiance showed some fight in the fourth quarter. The Bulldogs scored on one offensive play on the next drive with a double reverse pass from Gutman to Nofziger that went 70 yards. The extra point was no good and it was 20-6 with 7:24 left in the game.

Defiance plays Van Wert. It will be a match-up of student versus teacher when Buti coaches against Bob Priest, a former assistant and current Cougar head coach. It will also be an emotional one, with Priest’s son currently in a coma after a farm accident earlier this summer. A collection was taken at the half of the game on Friday night to benefit Priest’s family for medical costs.

Defiance is now 3-1, 2-1 in the WBL.

“This was not a make-or-break game for us,” Buti said. “It was a make game for us. No one expected us to be 3-0. If we would’ve beaten St. Marys it would have been really shocking to the rest of the league.”

Asked what this win meant to his program heading into another rivalry game against Wapakoneta next Friday, Doug Frye said what he usually says.

“It means we’d better be ready for next week,” Frye said. “That’s what it means.”

Frye walked off the field with pant legs sopping wet with sticky red-brown mud, like the win he’ll soon wash his team of in order to be ready to head onto the next challenge.

ST. MARYS 20
DEFIANCE   6

                 1    2    3    4     F
St. Marys   7    0    7    6    20
Defiance    0     0    0    6     6

SCORING SUMMARY
First Quarter
SM — Tyler Menker 19-yard TD reception from Jake Taylor (PAT good), SM 7-0, 4:35 (2-play, 39-yard drive).

Third Quarter
SM — Jeremy Frey six-yard TD reception from Jake Taylor (PAT good), SM 14-0, 4:52 (8-play, 39-yard drive).

Fourth Quarter
SM — Paul Lauth 15-yard TD reception from Jake Taylor (PAT no good), SM 20-0, 11:50 (6-play, 46-yard drive).        

DEF — Alex Nofziger 70-yard TD reception from Craig Gutman (PAT no good), SM 20-6, 7:36 (1-play, 70-yard drive).
          
                          SM                 DEF
First Downs            9                   8
Rushing             41-104            31-68
Yards per rush      2.5                2.2
Passing           8-12-121         9-25-171
Total Offense       225                239
Turnovers               0                   3

Rushing — SM - Jeremy Frey 18-54,  Aaron Homan 15-55, Jake Taylor 8--7, Cody Martin 1-2; DEF - Travis Spitnale 13-51, Alex Perez 4-10, Jordan Gonzalez 14-7.

Passing — SM - Jake Taylor 8-14-121, 3 TDs; DEF - Jordan Gonzalez 8-24-101, 1 INT, Craig Gutman 1-1-70, 1 TD.

Receiving — SM - Cody Martin 3-40, Cory Dammeyer 1-34, Tyler Menker 1-19 (TD), Paul Lauth 1-15 (TD), Matt Watkins 1-8, Jeremy Frey 1-5 (TD); DEF - Craig Gutman 4-53 , Alex Nofziger 5-118 (TD).

Fumble recoveries - SM - Justin Felver, David Long.

Interceptions - Cory Dammeyer.