By: Sean Moylan
Last year the Northern Burlington County Regional High School varsity football team opened with a phenomenal win over Holy Cross, only to grow a bit overconfident and lose a couple of games it should have won.
This year the Greyhounds won their opener again as they beat the Pirates, 16-0, at Cinnaminson last Friday night. Only this time around there will be no chance of the Greyhounds growing overconfident as they barely escaped with a win against a team they were expected to have their way against.
"I did not think we played well at all. We were very fortunate to beat that team," said Jon Reising, the head coach of the Greyhounds.
NBC had a strong opening drive which stalled after a penalty. Pinned on the 1-yard line NBC did all it could just to stay out of its own end zone on its second offensive possession.
The Greyhounds’ offense also had trouble converting on fourth and short situations in the first half. With the Pirates on the verge of scoring from the 1-yard line, Jarrett East-Brown made a big fumble recovery to prevent Cinnaminson from scoring in the closing seconds of the opening stanza.
If it were not for such big plays by the NBC defense Cinnaminson may have been able to sneak out a win. Luckily NBC’s fortunes changed in the third quarter as Jake DiCioccio (101 yards on 31 carries) chewed up enough yards to set up a Jake Pates’ special delivery to Troy Richards for a 12-yard touchdown.
"Jake Pates made a nice play as he avoided some pressure," said Reising.
In the fourth quarter, Cinnaminson was called for illegal holding in the end zone along with another penalty and NBC was awarded a safety to take a 9-0 lead. NBC got its last score on special teams with roughly three minutes remaining in the game.
"We had a bad snap on a punt and Bryan Reading picked up the ball and started running with it. To be honest, I’ve never been so mad with a touchdown in my life," said Reising, who felt their was still enough time to get off the punt.
Otherwise NBC actually had a good day on special teams, which was the team’s weak spot last season. Moreover, Josert Fonseca kicked a pair of extra pointers and booted the ball deep on kickoffs. Defensively, NBC made big plays the whole game.
"The defense played very well. But nobody stood out over anyone else. Everybody was doing their job," said Reising.
However, the Greyhounds failed to take advantage of several offensive opportunities.
"If you want to be a good team you don’t make mistakes at critical points," said Reising. "After the game I was honest with them and told them I wasn’t happy with the way they had played. And they weren’t gloating with what they had done either."
In fact, NBC came back on Saturday and had a tremendous practice. Reising wasn’t trying to be over critical, it’s just that NBC has big games versus timber Creek Seneca and Camden High coming up. And even one mistake against any of those teams may be one too many.
NBC is scheduled at New Egypt this Friday. While New Egypt is just a Group I school, the Warriors are a well-coached unit that takes advantage of the opposition’s mistakes. So the Greyhounds will need to play a fairly clean game to walk away with a triumph. The game will be a must win for NBC, but even then the benefits of victory will not be substantial.
"Playing New Egypt doesn’t help us, it only hurts us because they are a Group I school with very few power points," said Reising, whose team’s post season hopes will most likely be predicated on power points.
One way, Reising sees for not letting a computer dictate where his team finishes is to keep on winning. And even though his team didn’t perform up to expectations last Friday, he was happy to post a win over the Pirates. Good coaches like Reising will always take the win.