Clairton’s Drahcir Jones runs over Greensburg Central Catholic for 271 yards, 4 TDs

By: Liam Belan
Friday, September 29, 2023 | 11:42 PM

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In a wild contest that featured six fourth-quarter touchdowns, Greensburg Central Catholic coach John Thompson felt the last one exemplified his team’s 40-28 loss at Clairton perfectly.

With about a minute remaining, the Bears (4-2, 3-0) faced fourth-and-1 from GCC’s 30-yard line. The score was 34-28, but the Centurions (3-3, 1-1) had trailed 28-7 and 34-14. If they could stop Clairton, they might have a chance to put a drive together and snatch a victory.

But, when the Centurions seemingly stuffed Clairton’s Drahcir Jones at the line, the junior emerged from a mass of bodies and flew to the end zone for his fourth rushing touchdown of the night.

“We thought we had them stuffed on that last play, but that was pretty much the story of the game where we had them stopped behind the line of scrimmage but he popped free,” Thompson said. “We just weren’t finishing plays defensively.”

Jones wreaked havoc on the Centurions. The junior back scored all four of his touchdowns in the second half after he was forced out of the game for about five minutes to end the first half when he dove on a fumbled pitch and seemed to hurt his left arm.

Jones put up 271 rushing yards with the four scores on 31 carries.

“I’m hoping that people are starting to watch and take notice (of Jones),” Clairton coach Wayne Wade said. “Kid’s a heck of an athlete, he plays both sides of the ball … so hats off to him tonight. He played extremely well.”

Despite there being 68 total points scored, there was no scoring in the first quarter as there were multiple turnovers and negated touchdowns from penalties.

“I’ve been proud of our discipline all year, but those two penalties that took points off the board obviously hurt,” Thompson said. “It happened on both sides of the ball, but that’s no excuse. The thing that we’re trying to improve on here is our team discipline, and we’ve been really good with it all year. And I’m proud of these guys. But this is one game where there were a few (mishaps).”

“I thought the officials did a great job,” Wade said. “I thought they let the kids play. Most of the calls that they made were spot on. … We’ve just got to clean up some of our mess.”

The Centurions opened the scoring early in the second quarter behind quarterback Tyree Turner. He finished 14 of 26 for 208 yards and two passing touchdowns, but it was a 2-yard rushing touchdown that got GCC on the board first. After a Jacob Reitler extra point, the Centurions went up 7-0.

The Bears responded with a 19 yard pitch-and-catch from quarterback Michael Wright to Zae-Mear Correll as seven minutes remained in the first half.

Clairton picked up an 8-7 lead after Michael Ruffin reached the end zone for a successful 2-point conversion.

The score remained 8-7 at the halftime break before both offenses exploded.

First came the scoring spurt for the Bears, as Jones scored his first touchdown from 40 yards away with 8:05 remaining in the third quarter to make it 16-7. Then, with 50 seconds remaining in the third frame, Wright found Taris Wooding for a 15-yard touchdown and made the score 22-7.

Right before the third quarter ended, Turner was under duress and threw a backwards pass that was recovered by Tyrant Sutton. This allowed Jones to score from 3 yards out at the beginning of the fourth quarter to push Clairton’s lead to 28-7.

After the score, the Centurions put an end to Clairton’s 28 unanswered points by finding paydirt through Nick Dlugos. His 1-yard score made the game 28-14 with 7:42 remaining.

Just 41 seconds later, after GCC failed to recover a perfect onside kick from Reitler, Jones scored from 33 yards away to give the Bears a 34-14 lead.

Reitler became a weapon late in the game for the Centurions after Turner connected with Peter Mazowiecki for a 15-yard touchdown with 4:44 left to play.

He put another flawless onside kick into play, and, this time, the Centurions were able to collect it and take possession back trailing 34-21.

“You usually don’t get a kicker as good as their kicker,” Wade said about Reitler. “He kicked one into the end zone on a kickoff, he’s making that ball bounce how you want it to on a grass field, so he really did a great job. He’s the best kicker we’ve seen all year.”

Turner again led a scoring drive as it was desperation time for the Centurions. He connected with Landon Honick for a 6-yard touchdown to bring his team’s deficit to 34-28 with 3:23 remaining.

However, GCC was unable to recover another onside kick, and Jones was able to gain a few first downs and find the end zone to put the game on ice at 40-28.

For the Bears, the win is their fourth in a row after starting the season with two shutout losses. They’re looking to continue the trend at Springdale.

“We have to go back, clean up our mistakes and look forward to our next opponent,” Wade said. “We take it one week at a time.”

The Centurions will look to clean up costly errors as they look to get back into the win column against Frazier.

“We’ve got to learn from it,” Thompson said. “We’re a young team. We only had four guys returning this year that had any type of playing experience, and we even have some seniors that are inexperienced that are playing and learning. Every game, they’re learning about themselves and how to get better. We’ll show them the good things they did on film and the things they need to work on.

“We didn’t make (Clairton) earn it, which was our goal. We gave them a bunch of plays. There are basic fundamentals that we need to get better at.”

Tags: Clairton, Greensburg C.C.