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Shepherd brushes past Gannon

By Bob Madison - For the Chronicle | Sep 17, 2021

Brown

SHEPHERDSTOWN — A welcomed breeze coming off nearby Lake Erie. A business-like 56-26 downing of homestanding Gannon by Shepherd. Counting the offensive yardage in the comfortable aftermath. Nice to be back to playing PSAC football again.

And immediately into deeper waters and seeing a more accomplished opponent this week when the Rams take a third straight road trip, this time to traditionally rough-to-handle Indiana, a 29-26 home-field winner over Kutztown in a PSAC headliner between teams with a conference championship on their minds.

Shepherd will be 2-0 after using the valuable time-providing pass protection given on-target quarterback Tyson Bagent, who accepted his offensive line’s quality blocking and completed 29 of 37 passes for five TDs and 363 through-the-air yards. Gannon was 1-1 overall. Now it’s on to Indiana, the site of a back-and-forth PSAC game where the two teams combined for 41 second-half points after being tied at 7-7 at halftime.

It was only Shepherd’s second game, but it showed the Rams to have numerous interchangeable parts on both offense and defense, while further exposing a shaky punting game and seeing the Rams be penalized seven times for 73 yards and waste several timeouts they might need in later matchups against more forceful teams.

Shepherd rushed for what could be one of its highest totals of the season — 220 yards, including a 58-yard TD romp by Ronnie Brown, numerous effective planned carries by Bagent and a healthy stretch of minutes by a group peopled entirely by reserves.

Bagent

The Rams owned a productive time of possession statistic — having possession for 35:02 to Gannon’s 24:58.

In the beginning, Gannon startled the Rams with a quick-strike TD that had it in front, 6-0, after just four plays from scrimmage. But Shepherd scored touchdowns with its first three possessions, using a 56-yard kickoff return for field position and then Bagent scoring passes to Greg Leonard, Ryan Beach and Brian Walker. In the second quarter, Michael McCook counted his first college points with TD receptions of five and four yards from Bagent.

Shepherd led, 35-9, at halftime.

Shepherd’s second-half scores were provided by Brown, Ty Hebron and Avaughn Holley — all along the ground. Holley had 69 yards on 12 carries with the reserve offensive line blocking for him.

Beach caught eight passes, Josh Gontarek had four receptions for 108 yards and Leonard was productive again, as he had been in the season-opening, 35-30, win at Ohio Dominican.

McCook

Causing concern to date in the two-game season have been punts of 13 yards, 14 yards, 31 yards and a best effort of 34 yards on four tries by Ryan Barrick.

Gannon was limited to only 81 rushing yards with its 25 carries.

The superiority Shepherd’s offensive line displayed had been the basis for its 30-point win.

And now come both Indiana and then Kutztown, the 2019 East Division champion. There was no 2020 football in the PSAC.

Hebron

Holley