ORONO, Maine — Occasionally the best game plan is a strategy not shared.
Not often, perhaps, but once in a while — such as when junior quarterback Spencer Baron ran a naked bootleg play 9 yards for a touchdown with 2:26 remaining at Alfond Stadium on Thursday night to lift John Bapst of Bangor to a 28-22 victory over Orono. The win clinched an LTC football playoff berth for Bapst.
Only two people — Baron and John Bapst coach Dan O’Connell — knew the true plan for that fourth-down play, the finale of a 10-play, 41-yard march that gave the Crusaders their only lead.
“It was there so it makes me look good, but we didn’t tell the huddle,” said O’Connell. “We called 44 rip and I told Spencer, ‘Don’t tell them, just keep it.’ We ran it against Mount View late in the game last week and he got caught by the D-end. I did remind him very friendly like, ‘Don’t get caught,’ and he didn’t. He did a great job.”
Nearly everyone in the stadium expected star tailback Jackson Leonard to get the ball one more time with John Bapst facing fourth-and-3 from the 9 — Leonard had carried the ball each of the previous eight plays.
But this time Baron faked the handoff to Leonard, then circled around left end and eluded an Orono defender before racing into the end zone to break the 22-22 tie.
“Coach O had the confidence to call the play for me,” said Baron. “I’d been cramping up, but we’d been running it all game long and Jackson had carried us down there, and then he gave me a chance to make a play.
“Once I faked the handoff I saw one guy to beat, but I had to get it in the end zone because we had to win.”
Orono had one last possession and drove into John Bapst territory before an interception by freshman J.J. Higgins clinched the come-from-behind victory with 46 seconds left.
The win improves John Bapst to 6-2 and means the Crusaders will enter next weekend’s LTC Eastern Maine Class D semifinals as the No. 3 seed.
Orono, which also could have earned a playoff berth with a victory in the annual joint Senior Night game with John Bapst, likely will miss out on postseason play with a 4-4 record.
It looked like just the opposite would happen at intermission, as Orono’s rushing offense dominated the first two quarters while building a 22-7 lead.
The Red Riots ran 43 plays in the half compared with 14 for John Bapst and controlled the ball for 19 minutes, 5 seconds to 4:55 for the Crusaders.
Orono took the opening kickoff and marched 66 yards in 18 plays to take an 8-0 lead on an 11-yard TD run by Matt Foster (18 rushes, 91 yards) and a two-point conversion run by Keenan Collett (24-90).
John Bapst immediately answered as Leonard (29-176) scored from 5 yards shortly after Garrett Pattershall’s 55-yard kickoff return.
But there was no stopping Orono early. Fowler scored his second touchdown on a spinning 9-yard effort 1:38 into the second quarter at the end of a nine-play, 59-yard march.
Then after Orono stopped John Bapst on downs at the Red Riots’ 18, sophomore quarterback Jackson Coutts led coach Bob Sinclair’s club on a 16-play, 79-yard sojourn that led to a 2-yard scoring run by Collett and a two-point conversion pass from Coutts to Connor McCluskey to make it 22-7 with 1:02 left before intermission.
But what followed was as if the teams changed uniforms at halftime.
John Bapst took the second-half kickoff and immediately drove 63 yards to close within 22-14 on a 3-yard run by Leonard and Harrison Dieuveuil’s extra-point kick.
“I think if we wouldn’t have scored right out of the gate it might have been a different story,” said O’Connell, “but when we scored to make it 22-14 and were one score away the kids started to believe, and then we made plays in the fourth quarter.”
John Bapst’s defense forced a three-and-out from Orono, and Leonard then sprinted 51 yards up the middle for the tying touchdown on a 51-yard sprint with 10 minutes left in the game.
Another three-and-out and a short Orono punt gave the Crusaders possession at the Red Riots’ 41 with 8:11 left, with Leonard assuming workhorse duties until O’Connell and Baron faked out their teammates to produce the playoff-clinching score.
