By BRIAN SMITH
Sports Editor

LIMA — What started out so well ended so abruptly.

The No. 1-ranked St. Marys Roughriders fell to Shawnee 17-7 on Friday night in a game that the Riders scored on its first position with an authoratitive drive that looked like it staked the Riders’ place in a Western Buckeye League showdown.

Three and a half quarters later, St. Marys head coach Doug Frye and a lot of unhappy Rider players were left to ponder just went wrong in their first loss of the 2008 season.

“We were just absolutely pathetic offensively,” Frye said. “Shawnee didn’t do anything defensively that we didn’t expect. But give Shawnee credit. I just don’t think we played as well as we are capable of playing.”

St. Marys (7-1, 6-1 in the WBL) still is in the driver’s seat for a league title and a home playoff game with two weeks left in the season, but there are teams — including Shawnee — in the rearview mirror waiting for the slightest sign of engine trouble.

“We still have an opportunity to win a league championship and and an opportunity to make the playoffs,” Frye said. “But that’s not going to be so easy after tonight. We can’t play the way we played tonight.”

The offense sputtered following a textbook first drive of the game. After St. Marys won the toss, took the ball and marched 77 yards to paydirt that was capped by a Josh Zimmerman touchdown run,  St. Marys failed to gain a first down in the second half until midway through the fourth quarter. By then St. Marys was down 17-7 and the late flickers of an offense were too little, too late.

Frye had no explanation for the offensive problems.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Frye said. “We left our defense on the field way too much. We can’t win football games that way. The credit goes to Shawnee, but we didn’t play the way we were capable tonight.”

St. Marys went scoreless for the final 41:03 of the game and watched as the Indians scored 17 unanswered points to put a hitch in the Riders plans of wrapping up at least a tie of the WBL title on Friday night.

How it got there was just as improbable for the Indians — on the right arm of a maligned quarterback and not with the legs of an All-Ohio running back.

“Every team over the last three weeks has been loading up the box against our running game,” Shawnee head coach Dick West said.  “Before that the other teams were loading up against the run, but we were still able to run the ball. To be successful against the more physical teams in the league like Defiance, Wapak and St. Marys we need to be able to throw the ball. We have been working on it all year, but things hadn’t come together. Today it came together for us.”

St. Marys did everything possible to keep all-state running back Brandon Stephenson at bay, stacking the line of scrimmage and opening with a zone in the secondary to begin the game.

“At first they were in a zone or something, then they adjusted and played man on us,” Shawnee tight end Sheldon Hall said. Hall made the move from fullback to tight end this week, a move that paid big dividends right away in the game with two big catches in Shawnee’s first possesssion. Shawnee quarterback Josh Miller picked a perfect night to have his best night as a high school quarterback.

The 6-foot-1 210-pound signal caller was almost flawless in the first half, engineering a drive to answer the Riders’ opening salvo with a Shawnee drive of his own.

“Josh played a heck of a game,” Hall said. “He led us out there.”

A hook-up with Hall on Shawnee’s first possession converted a third and long and then on the next play Miller found Hall again for 20 yards that put the Indians deep in St. Marys territory.

“It was just finding the open man,” Miller said. “A lot of the time on first down they were running man coverage. So the safety was coming up, so I found Sheldon. It was about finding the receivers and believing in your abilities and putting it in there. I think St. Marys was ready for it, but maybe not as much as we did it tonight. Things clicked tonight.”

Hall felt like he had all the room in the world on the first offensive drive.

“Once I got out in the open, there was nobody covering me,” Hall said. “I thought they were caught a little off guard.”

And then when Shawnee needed to run clock late in the game, Stephenson broke off some big runs on draw plays.

“I think that passing game freed up the draw late in the game,” Hall said.

Shawnee went up 10-7 with 6:41 left in the third quarter when Cody Kopilchack nailed a 30-yard field goal to cap a 10-play drive for the Indians that started the second half.

“Cody is a great kicker,” West said. “When it was fourth down, I didn’t hesitate to send him out there to kick it.”

After a three-and-out by the Rider offense, Shawnee went back to work on another 10-play drive. This one ended in a four-yard Brandon Stephenson touchdown run that made it 17-7.

St. Marys got the ball down into Shawnee territory in the fourth quarter via the pass, but the Riders ran out of downs as they ran out of time.

The Roughriders will try to regroup when they host Kenton in the final home game of the season at Skip Baughman Stadium next weekend.

This is the second straight win for Shawnee over the Roughriders. Last year’s 14-7 win at St. Marys was what kept the Riders from a playoff spot and a share of the league title. This season, St. Marys is still assured of the outright league title if they beat Kenton next week and Elida in Week 10.

Frye was pleased by the work of his defense, which held Shawnee to 213 total yards and made a big stop in the second quarter by stuffing Stephenson on two straight plays when the Indians needed just one yard for a first down. St. Marys also forced a fumble on a reverse that David Long scooped up.

St. Marys had two drives in the first half stall in Indian territory and Jake Taylor had another pass intercepted when he looked for a receiver down the seam.

 
Shawnee  17
St. Marys   7

                      1    2     3      4      F
St. Marys        7    0     0      0      7
Shawnee         7    0    10     0     17
 
SCORING SUMMARY
First Quarter
SM — Josh Zimmerman 5-yard TD run, Chaz Adkins extra point good, SM 7-0, 6:58 (14-play, 77-yard drive).

SHA — Josh Miller 1-yard TD run, Cody Kopilchack extra point good, 7-7, 2:06 (10-play, 72-yard drive).

Third Quarter
SHA —Kopilchack 30-yard field goal, SHA 10-7, 6:41 (12-play, 64-yard drive).

SHA — Brandon Stephenson 4-yard TD run, SHA 17-7, 1:32 (10-play, 59-yard drive).

                      SM                  SHA
Rushing         42-173            43-80                                                                                                   Yards per rush     4.1              1.9
Passing         9-21-95        8-14-130
Total Yards         268             213
Turnovers            2                 1

Rushing — SM - Jeremy Frey 13-65,  Aaron Homan 7-34, Cody Martin 6-29, Josh Zimmerman 6-24, Cory Dammeyer 3-4, Jake Taylor 5-6, Dylan Dietz 1-1. SHA - Brandon Stephenson 22-68,  Isaiah Irons 6-1, Josh Miller 13-18, Jamiil Williams 1--4, Chad Gillis 1- -3.

Passing — SM - Jake Taylor 9-21-95, 1 INT. SHA - Josh Miller 8-14-130.

Receiving — SM - Cody Martin 2-24, Matt Watkins 1-3, Cory Dammeyer 1-13, Aaron Homan 1-19, Derek Freewalt 1-5, Jeremy Frey 1-16. SHA - Sheldon Hall 3-48, Isaiah Irons 3-27, Chad Gillis 2-49.