Big Red keeps rolling to 3-0
Andrew Grimm POWER RUN — Big Red's Colton Henderson pushes off a Linsly defender during Friday's game at Harding Stadium. Henderson ran for 212 yards and four touchdowns in a 48-7 Big Red win.
Andrew Grimm CELEBRATING — Big Red's Landon Crosier is congratulated by Santino Haney after scoring a touchdown against Linsly.
Andrew Grimm POWER RUN — Big Red's Colton Henderson pushes off a Linsly defender during Friday's game at Harding Stadium. Henderson ran for 212 yards and four touchdowns in a 48-7 Big Red win.
Andrew Grimm CELEBRATING — Big Red's Landon Crosier is congratulated by Santino Haney after scoring a touchdown against Linsly.
Trending
STEUBENVILLE -- The Big Red football team took the field with heavy hearts on Friday night.
They found out prior to Friday night's game that retired teacher and coach Joe Pierro tragically died on Friday.
When the game started, the team he helped coach for so many years put together a 48-7 victory over visiting Linsly, giving a grieving Big Red community a reason to smile.
"Our boys were playing tonight for coach Pierro," Big Red head coach Reno Saccoccia said. "That's who that game was for tonight. He coached here for a long time, baseball and football. This one was for him."
Steubenville improved to 3-0 with the victory over the Cadets (0-2) with an all-around effort that started with a big play on defense and featured several more explosive plays on offense.
"I'm happy with the way the players played," Saccoccia said. "We made some big plays on both sides of the ball, special teams did a good job. I'm just happy with the whole effort.
"We break the season down into three game segments and the first three games we did as well as we can do. Now we have to reset our goals and come back on Monday ready to go.
"I wish Linsly the best of luck the rest of the year."
Big Red out-gained the Cadets 417-142 on the night and scored the final 34 points of the game to pull away.
"It's always a challenge to come up here," Linsly head coach BJ Depew said. "I felt like we were successful for the majority of our snaps in the first half, but they made their successful snaps count a lot more.
"We did a good job of possessing the ball in the first half, but it really wore us down and gassed us. In the second half, we had a lot of guys with cramps and were tired. That's a credit to Steubenville for being a physical, deep, well-conditioned team and they handled tonight better than we did."
The Big Red ground game again led the way, racking up 330 yards rushing on the night. That charge was again led by junior Colton Henderson, who rushed for 212 yards and four touchdowns on 11 carries, including breaking scoring runs of 80 and 64 yards.
Orlando Anderson's interception on the first drive of the game set up Landon Crosier's 6-yard scoring run to make it 7-0 Steubenville.
The two long Henderson runs came at key moments of the game as the 80-yarder came one play after Linsly had missed a field goal to come up empty on a promising drive when the score was 7-0.
The 64-yard run came one play after the Cadets had got on the board with a Rocco Troullos 14-yard run to cut the lead in half, quickly pushing it back out to a two-score lead.
Linsly never seemed to fully recover from that momentum swing.
"We gave them a couple of short fields and gave up a couple of one-play drives," Depew said. "I was pleased with how we possessed and moved the ball in the first half, but the big plays hurt us.
"Those really changed the momentum. Steubenville is always great at running the ball, we knew that coming in, and we just did not do a good job of fitting the run up and making an open field tackle and they are explosive enough to take it the distance. We have to play better defense in those moments."
Big Red led 21-7 at halftime and ground it out in the second half with a plethora of ball carriers. All told, 10 different players toted the ball for Steubenville.
Henderson scored two more times in the second half on runs of 9 and 4 yards, while Nathan Spencer scored on a 4-yard run in the fourth quarter and Kaiden Anderson hauled in a touchdown pass from backup quarterback Harrison Sturch.
Defensively, Big Red held the Cadets under 75 yards both passing and rushing. Anderson also had a sack and forced a fumble, Crosier -- who had a 50-yard punt return on special teams that set up a score -- had two big tackles for loss, Braidyn Edwards had an interception, Kyler Snyder had two tackles for loss and Derek Smith and Zakaree Lovelace combined on another sack.
UP NEXT
Linsly: Takes on St. Clairsville next week in a game that is scheduled to be played at Bethany College.
Big Red: Goes on the road for the first time next week to take on Cardinal Mooney at YSU's Stambugh Stadium.