{"id":369,"date":"2010-10-09T10:12:09","date_gmt":"2010-10-09T14:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unionvilletimes.com\/?p=369"},"modified":"2010-10-09T10:13:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T14:13:34","slug":"unionville-escapes-miscues-holds-off-oxford-24-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=369","title":{"rendered":"Unionville escapes miscues, holds off Oxford, 24-21"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bad week of practice leads to shaky on field effort, coach Pat Clark says<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This first quarter field goal block may have been the difference in Unionville's 24-21 win over Oxford, Friday night. \u2014Mike McGann photo <\/p><\/div>\n

EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 Pat Clark knew this was going to be a tough game \u2014 and that maybe for the first time all season, his Unionville High School football team wasn\u2019t as mentally prepared as he\u2019d liked when they took the field against Oxford Friday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe practiced as poorly as we\u2019ve practiced (this week) in seven years since I\u2019ve been here,\u201d Clark said after his Indians barely held off the Hornets, 24-21, Friday night.<\/p>\n

In fact, were it not for a blocked field goal in the first quarter, 3-3 Unionville\u2019s narrow hope of advancing to the state playoffs might have been snuffed out. The Hornets (1-5) took the opening kickoff right down the field as the Indians once again seemed to struggle in the opening minutes of a game. Unionville dodged an early bullet when a third down pass from quarterback Connor Hallenbach fell short and the Cody Hubley\u2019s 28-yard field goal attempt was blocked.<\/p>\n

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Unionville quarterback Connor Gadesbreak for a 40-yard TD run, Friday night.<\/p><\/div>\n

Getting the ball back seemed to calm down Unionville, which after taking over on its own 41 after the block, quickly marched down and scored, largely on the running of senior quarterback Connor Gades, who scored from 40 yards out to make it 7-0 with the point after. After an exchange of punts, Gades led another long Indians drive \u2014 capping it with a three-yard run to make it 14-0 with the point after. A Norb Sax field goal \u2014 a 40-yarder \u2014 appeared to put Unionville in command, 17-0.<\/p>\n

But Oxford wasn\u2019t ready to quit \u2014 even if the early drive didn\u2019t mean points, it built confidence on offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cOxford is much improved,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThey have a new staff and their kids play with tremendous effort and physically, they have some good looking kids. So they came out and wanted to establish themselves right away, and they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the passing of Hallenbach and the running Bradley Tinnin, Oxford climbed right back into the game. Hollenbach hit a wide open Thomas Sanchez with a 64-yard scoring pass and then on the next possession, halfback Geovanni Cruz \u2014 who\u2019s also the backup QB for the Hornets \u2014 hit a long pass on a halfback option play to Hubley, setting up Tinnin\u2019s TD run. Jimmy Gill managed to block the ensuing extra point attempt \u2014 and the Indians found themselves clinging to a 17-13 lead.<\/p>\n

Mason Popham\u2019s big return on the kickoff got Unionville in business \u2014 but it was a disputed call, one of a number of shaky calls by an officiating staff that appeared to lose control of the game \u2014 a personal foul call on Oxford on a play when Popham had appeared to have been stopped that gave Unionville new life. Popham managed to plunge in from one yard out \u2014 and Unionville had what appeared to be a safe 24-13 lead with 8:02 left in the game.<\/p>\n

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Unionville's Evan Weselyk is stopped cold by the Oxford defense. <\/p><\/div>\n

But Hollenbach would not be denied. He engineered a 14-play, 61 yard drive and got his Hornets back into striking distance. With a two-point conversion by Tinnin, Oxford was within 3 points with 3:10 remaining in the game.<\/p>\n

Then Unionville offense couldn\u2019t get moving on offense and gave it back to Oxford via punt with 2:39 to play \u2014 but then the Indian defense stiffened \u2014 and stopped the Hornets dead at midfield.<\/p>\n

It may not have been pretty, but the win does keep Unionville in the postseason picture. But with Sun Valley looming next week \u2014 Clark thinks the win, and how difficult it was could change attitudes on his squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cSun Valley beat these guys,\u201d Clark said. \u201cWe have our work cut out for us. Winning will help with four or five different things: attitude and execution and stuff. We have to be better. This is not acceptable. Penalties, fumbles, mistakes, that is not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad week of practice leads to shaky on field effort, coach Pat Clark says By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 Pat Clark knew this was going to be a tough game \u2014 and that maybe for the first time all season, his Unionville High School football team wasn\u2019t as mentally prepared as he\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,16,18],"tags":[31,33,32,58,24],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-sports","category-schools","category-unionville-high-school","tag-football","tag-high-school","tag-indians","tag-sports-2","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}