LAKEWOOD, Ohio — Both teams struggled to move the ball after St. Edward went down and cut the Massillon lead to three in the third quarter.
The two defenses made big play after big play and for more than 16 minutes of game time Friday night at First Federal Lakewood Stadium the score was stuck at 24-21.
It finally changed with 1:34 left to play when Massillon’s Mylen Lenix broke off a 39-yard TD run to make sure the Tigers went back to Stark County victorious.
“I know everybody wants to win. Our guys really, really want to win real bad because they’ve worked so hard for it,” Massillon head coach Nate Moore said. “We’ve got the greatest football town in America that has our back. You saw them out here tonight and our guys play for them and I think that’s part of what you saw out there tonight also.”
Friday’s matchup was the first meeting between Ohio’s defending state champions in Divisions I and II since Cincinnati St. Xavier blew out Cincinnati La Salle, 42-7, back in 2017.
The Eagles (3-1), No. 1 in the cleveland.com Top 2% rankings, are the three-time defending OHSAA state football champions in Division I, while Massillon (3-1) is the reigning state champion in Division II.
St. Edward has routinely played Massillon, Archbishop Hoban and Toledo Central Catholic — three recent Division II state champions — but never when both were coming off title runs.
The Eagles and Tigers played at Massillon four years in a row before the moving the game to Lakewood this season. The Tigers emerged victorious, 15-13, last season in quarterback Thomas Csanyi’s first start. In three of those years the score was decided by three points or less.
Early on it appeared the Tigers would come out on top once again. After blocking a St. Edward field goal Mateo Herrera went down and made a 26-yarder for the first points of the game.
The Tigers blocked a St. Edward punt on the next Eagles possession. They marched right downfield and a Ja’Meir Gamble TD gave the Tigers a 10-0 lead.
Then St. Edward woke up.
A solid return from Bradley Eaton set the Eagles up at midfield. Then Eaton hauled in a 14-yard pass from Csanyi to put the Eagles on the board.
Not even two minutes later the Eagles needed just one play, a 69-yard catch and run from Zach Hackleman, to take their first lead of the night at 14-10.
The Tigers refused to tuck their tails and go quietly into halftime, however.
A mixture of Jalen Slaughter’s legs and arm had Massillon knocking on the door before he found Braylyn Toles on a TD pass with 11 seconds until halftime.
“You just gotta stay patient,” Slaughter said of his mindset with the clock running low. “You don’t want to rush anything. Just get in the groove, get in the drive, and go down the field and just score.”
The lead jumped back up to 10 when Gamble broke off a 47-yard TD run coming out of the half. He finished the game with 148 rushing yards and two TDs on 24 carries.
After a big time stop from the Tiger defense their offense had an opportunity to make it a three possession game, but a forced fumble by Nate Gregory gave the Eagles the ball back in Tiger territory.
The Eagles’ offense made good on the defensive effort when Joe Stafford hauled in a four-yard TD pass from Csanyi with 5:10 left in the third, cutting the Massillon lead to 24-21.
Defense dominated the next 16 minutes of game action.
An interception from Aydin Buchanan gave the Eagles the ball back with 5:18 to go. They went four-and-out with Csanyi running into a wall of Tigers on fourth-and-one.
“We’re close. We did some good things in the game, we just didn’t do enough of them at critical times,” Eagles head coach Tom Lombardo said. “The score at the end of the half, not converting the fourth down, not getting off the field when we needed to at certain times gave them the momentum. We were down there a couple times to score and we just, we didn’t convert.”
When Massillon go the ball back they knew exactly what to do with it. They began their march downfield and effectively ended the game when Lenix went 39 yards for the TD.
“Twenty-one and five is a special duo right there,” Slaughter said. “I like it.”
