Trenton rallies past MHS in opening-round game
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Through the first half and the first possession of the second half, the Montgomery High School football team had the momentum in their Central Jersey Group V playoff opener Friday night.
But when the fourth-seeded Cougars lost it, they never got it back and fifth-seeded Trenton rallied for the 27-24 win that ended Montgomery’s season.
”They took over the game,” said MHS head coach Zoran Milich after his team finished 8-2. “They took it over physically on both sides of the ball. We weren’t able to stop the run. They were pounding on us. They have great size up front. They did what I worried they could do. They pounded the ball on us and sort of shut us down on offense. We weren’t scoring.
”Normally we can weather the storm if we’re scoring. It was a bad combination. We stopped scoring, and we stopped stopping them.”
The second half started so well for MHS, it was hard to envision what transpired over the final 21 minutes. The Cougars temporarily knocked Trenton quarterback Juan Rivera out of the game as his pass was intercepted by Sean Curry. It took the Cougars just four plays before they converted it to a touchdown on a 14-yard pass from Chris Chugunov to Mitch Chugunov to build a 24-7 lead with 9:09 left in the third quarter.
Said Milich: “After we got that interception and scored a touchdown and we’re up by 17 and things are looking good, we let a drive go down we really didn’t do anything after that offensively and quite frankly we didn’t do anything defensively after that either.”
Trenton scored touchdowns on its next three drives as it utilized a bulldozing running attack and mixed in timely passes. Trenton’s Andrew Holt ran for 164 yards and three touchdowns in the second half.
”They were really grinding on us,” Milich said. “It wasn’t like they were getting one or two yards. They were pounding five or six yards at a clip. You have to give them credit. They took it to us in the second half.”
Even after those three scores gave Trenton its first lead of the game, the Cougars had a chance to regain the lead. Montgomery used a Trenton personal foul and a key third-down-and-10 conversion from Chris Chugunov to tight end Zach Martin to move into Trenton territory with still seven minutes left in the game. But after Chugunov’s next pass was caught, Montgomery fumbled it back to Trenton. MHS’ final drive ended quietly with three straight incompletions and a false start penalty.
”They fought their tails off all year,” Milich said. “They’re great kids. I told them to keep their heads up. It’s tough. It’s a tough one to swallow.
”Their character is who they are. I was proud of the fact that they weren’t pointing fingers. It was melting down at the end there. It would have been very easy. We stuck together as much as we could. They ended up taking it to our kids, but I like the fact that our kids stuck together.”
Chugunov completed 15 passes for 203 yards and two touchdowns. He opened the game with a touchdown pass to his brother to cap their first drive of the game. On the Cougars’ second drive, Chugunov’s 30-yard completion to Jabari Clemons set up a shifty 13-yard touchdown run by Wyatt Colangelo to make it 14-0. The Cougars’ third drive was highlighted by a 29-yard gain by Trevor Schmidt on a swing pass, but the drive had to settle for a 20-yard field goal by Brian Flood for a 17-0 lead on the first play of the second quarter. Trenton came back to score and when the second half started, the tide began to turn as a Cougars team thinned by key injuries wore down.
”What I didn’t want to play was a big, physical football game,” Milich said. “I just knew that could take its toll. We had kids hurt and they came back. They were gutting it out. We had some kids banged up, and they just gave us everything they had.
”The thing I take from the season is these kids always played real tough, they never gave up and they gave everything they had out there. I can’t ask for more than that.”