Mount Greylock Survives Wild Finish Against Wildcats
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- You only get so many miracles in life.
On Friday night, the Mount Greylock football team got one and made the most of it.
Lee fumbled on first down at midfield with 1 minute, 32 seconds left, and the Mounties went 50 yards in four plays to earn an 18-16 win on John T. Allen Field.
Devin Pelletier scored from the 6 on first and goal with 1:07 on the clock for the last points of a back-and-forth battle that saw the lead change hands three times in the second half.
Like everyone at the field, Pelletier thought the game was over when Lee senior Casey Blair picked off a Brodie Altiere pass at midfield with 1:36 on the clock.
"That was such an emotional swing," Pelletier said. "It's still insane to think about how lucky we got."
Mount Greylock coach Andrew Agostini was still processing the reversal of fortune several minutes after the final whistle.
"We only had one timeout left, and the game's basically over," Agostini said. "That's the only thing we could have hoped for was a fumble, and it popped out. We happened to be right place, right time and then we were going.
"You certainly don't expect it. You don't bank on those things. It's not like we could hold them for a stand. They just had to run the clock out. It's high school football. These things happen."
Altiere's first pass after the fumble fell incomplete, but his second attempt of the possession was hauled in by Sean McCormack for a 32-yard gain to get down to the 18.
On first down, Altiere (11-for-18, 191 yards) rolled to his right and kept on going for a 12-yard gain, getting out of bounds to stop the clock with 1:07 on the clock.
Then the Mounties, who struggled all night to run the ball, dialed up a run for Pelletier, who went the final 6 to push his total for the game to 19 and, much more importantly, supply the winning points.
"I think coach knew it was going to happen," Pelletier said. "We were calling 'mamba' all night, which is spreading the defense out. We spread them out one more time, and we punched it in.
"We got them set up thinking pass, pass, pass, pass, and we ran it at the end and they weren't ready for it."
Agostini gave Lee (2-4) credit for frustrating the Mounties' running attack most of the night.
"We had some trouble with some of our assignments," he said. "We kind of got that figured out in the second half. The first half, I think we ran 11 plays. So we didn't have the ball a lot. We didn't have time to make adjustments. We talked about some things at half-time, but even so, they were stonewalling us. The fourth quarter, we got it going a little bit.
"But whenever we play Lee, it's always a wild game, and this one was no exception."
The Mounties (3-3) jumped out to an early lead when Altiere hit Brandon Condon down the left side for a 59-yard scoring strike on the third play of the game.
But the Wildcats answered right back with an eight-play, 66-yard drive that ended with a 3-yard run by Nick Castillo. Nick Wood connected on the extra point to give Lee a 7-6 lead.
Castillo had 46 yards rushing in the first quarter but left the game and was looked at by medical personnel after half-time.
Meanwhile, the 'Cats went 42 yards on the last possession of the second half to set up a 26-yard field goal by Wood to make it 10-6 at the half.
Altiere directed a 77-yard scoring drive on Greylock's first possession of the second half. He completed five straight passing attempts, the last a 51-yarder to McCormack. The 2-point try was no good, but the Mounties had a 12-10 lead.
Lee took the ensuing kickoff and went from its 45 to the 6 in a drive that ate up 6:23 off the clock. But the Mount Greylock defense stiffened in the shadow of its goal line and forced a field goal try which was no good.
A failed fourth-down attempt on the Mounties' next possession gave Lee the ball at its own 36. Ryan Ruef busted a 42-yard run to get the Wildcats into the red zone. And Ruef finished the drive with a 13-yard run to make it 16-12. The 2-point try was no good, and the Wildcats settled for a four-point lead.
The teams traded failed fourth-down attempts before the Mounties got the ball on their 21 with 1:49 left to play.
Altiere ran for 4 yards before throwing the interception to Blair that started the wild final sequence.
"Lee played us so tough," Agostini said. "They took away a lot of the things we do. They were better than us in a lot of the facets, especially on defense. But we got one more chance, and we made it count. We made a couple of plays, and we made it count."
Mount Greylock travels to Wahconah (3-3) on Friday night. Lee has an independent game at Turners Falls.