Gallery by Greg Barnett
Gardner – Coming in at No. 16 in the Class AA playoff ratings, Shady Spring knew it had to win Tuesday at PikeView to make the postseason.
At halftime, trailing 20-7, those hopes looked dashed. Five minutes out of the break they were fully reignited.
Senior running back Bryson Pinardo scored three second-half touchdowns, helping the Tigers roll off 33 second-half points in a 40-26 win over the Panthers Tuesday in Gardner.
Pinardo, who made the playoffs on the Tigers 2018 and 2019 squads, made it his personal mission to make sure the Tigers’ postseason hopes remained alive.
“We wanted to go to the playoffs,” Pinardo said. “The season started rough for us. Everybody kind of looked down on us. Throughout the school, throughout the community everybody was like ‘Are you guys really that good?’ So the rest of the year we wanted to prove to everybody that we could go to the playoffs and we are a playoff team. Just knowing this game was a make or break one for us gave me the push to go further. We knew we had to get this one done.”
The Tigers’ woes in defending the run showed early as the Panthers opened the game with a 16-play, 80-yard drive that ate up over eight minutes and ended in a one-yard scoring sneak from quarterback Peyton Greer. On the drive 54 of the 80 yards came on the ground.
The scoring stopped until the 3:03 mark of the second quarter, but those final three minutes put the Panthers in a comfortable spot.
The Tigers finally answered PikeView’s score when Caleb Whittaker found paydirt from 11 yards out, but a seven-play, 63-yard drive from the Panthers was capped by a nine-yard scoring jaunt from Amiliyon Barnes. Looking to go fast and answer before the break, the Tigers moved the ball to the PikeView 27, but an interception by Dylan Blake squashed those hopes.
Two plays later Blake made to outlook even bleaker for the visitors.
Streaking up the seam, Greer connected with an open Blake for a 55-yard scoring strike that staked the hosts to a 20-7 lead at the intermission.
“I didn’t say much of nothing to them,” Shady head coach Vince Culicerto said of the halftime speech he gave his team. “This bunch doesn’t respond well to that. They’re just a relaxed bunch. Maybe too relaxed at times. We were too relaxed in the first half but after that Friday game at Liberty, I was worried about this. We kind of did it last the last time we played back to backs like this. We had a tight game with Summers County and turned around and played Westside and were dead. We were dead tonight and just needed a spark.”
After an onside kick attempt that put the ball at the PikeView 44, the Tigers went to work but still struggled. Facing a fourth-and-7 at the PikeView 32, Shady QB Cameron Manns rolled right, threw a ball up for grabs that sailed over the outstretched hands of a PikeView defender and into those of Jacob Showalter for a 22-yard conversion. Pinardo did the rest of the work, picking up the final 10 yards on two carries to cap the scoring drive.
Huge completion by Cam Manns, hitting Jacob Showalter. #wvprepfb pic.twitter.com/rwZPAYmjrZ
— Tyler Jackson (@TJack94) November 2, 2021
It didn’t take long before the Tiger offense was back on the field.
On the next play from scrimmage a PikeView fumble was recovered by Shady at the Panthers’ 30. Three Pinardo carries picked up 27 of next 30 yards, with the final one resulting in a one-yard run that tied the game.
The Panthers battled back to retake the lead when Greer found Blake again, but Pinardo’s third straight scoring run from inside the three knotted the game again at 26.
Next came the backbreaking turnovers for the Panthers.
PikeView threw an interception and fumbled to end its following two drives. The Tigers made both count with Caleb Whittaker scoring after both. Putting the finishing touches on the game was last week’s hero Jacob Showalter, who picked Greer off in the waning seconds to preserve the win.
“The first half we just had the momentum on our side,” PikeView head coach Jason Spears said. “The offense was playing great, the defense was playing great and we just had it going. But we’ve preached to them all year that you’ve got to finish the game. You’ve gotta finish all four quarters. I don’t know if we just came out satisfied in the second half and thought they were going to lay down, but they didn’t. They’re a tough team that won’t lay down and they had a lot at stake with the playoffs. You’ve gotta finish. The turnovers in that second half killed us.”
In the second half the Tigers were much more efficient on defense, limiting PikeView to eight rushes for 17 yards and five completions for 67 yards.
Culicerto credited that to an adjustment made on the defensive side of the ball that put his players in more comfortable positions.
“We went from a four to a five front,” Culicerto said. “We’ve been running that some and it puts Whittaker and Hayden Johnson on the edges. (James) Sellards is why we switched to this defense we used the first half and it kind of had Whittaker and Hayden Johnson in a spot they’re not comfortable with. We were hoping they’d play it well but they were not functioning well, so we went back to five and put a lineman in there for Sellards, who’s done its once before, and we rolled with it. That put more pressure on the quarterback.”
Pinardo led the Tigers with 22 carries for 131 yards and three touchdowns while Whittaker had 23 carries for 115 yards, also scoring three times. For PikeView Dylan Blake caught eight passes for 178 yards and two scores, also intercepting a pass.
PikeView drops to 2-7 and will conclude its season Friday when it travels to Nicholas County. Shady Spring concludes its regular season at 7-3 and will likely qualify for the playoffs.
“We made it my freshman year and I got to play in the playoffs my sophomore year,” Pinardo said. “and I guess again this year, so it’s meaningful to me to get to go to the playoffs three out of four years. It’s something special.”
Scoring plays
First Quarter
PV: Greer 1 rush (Conversion fails), 3:44
Second quarter
SS: Whittaker 11 rush (Harmon Kick), 3:03
PV: Barnes 9 rush (Conversion fails), 1:19
PV: Blake 55-yard pass from Greer (Greer to Blake), :31
Third quarter
SS: Pinardo 2 rush (PAT Missed), 9:01
SS: Pinardo 2 rush (Hamron PAT), 7:23
PV: Blake 18-yard pass from Greer (Conversion Fails), 1:46
Fourth Quarter
SS: Pinardo 1 rush (blocked), 10:57
SS: Whittaker 22 rush (Harmon PAT)
SS: Whittaker 1 rush (Harmon PAT), 6:18
Individual Stats
Rushing – PV: Amiliyon Barnes 9-60, Dylan Blake 4-21, Peyton Greer 9-20, Austin Shrewsbury 8-2; SS:Bryson Pinardo 22-131, Caleb Whittaker 23-115, Cameron Manns 2-9, Tyler Mackey 1-9.
Passing – PV: Peyton Greer 12-23-211-2 TDs-3 INT; SS: Manns 6-16-65-0 TDs-2 INTs.
Receiving – PV: Dylan Blake 8-188-2 TDs, Nate Riffe 3-30; SS: Jake Showalter 2-34, Grant Davis 2-26, Caleb Whittaker 1-3, Tyler Mackey 1-2.