Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

WEST BRANCH – Locked in a tie game at the half of its playoff opener West Branch had a few tricks up its sleeve.

The trick the Bears pulled out in the second half on Friday night actually wasn’t much of a trick at all.

In fact it was about as simple as it gets – West Branch ran the ball, a lot.

It was the way the Bears ran the ball after halftime that was tricky.

Using a newly implemented jumbo wildcat package West Branch ran for four second-half touchdowns and pulled away for a 35-20 win over Pleasantville in a Class 1A opening-round matchup at the Little Rose Bowl in West Branch.

“At halftime it was all positive, we had kind of stopped ourselves with a couple of penalties and a few miscues but we were running the ball pretty well in our spread formations,” West Branch coach John Hierseman said. “We felt pretty good about things at halftime but we had this wildcat package we were holding for short yardage and we said, ‘the heck with it, lets go with it’ and they just kept going.”

Tied 7-7 at the break West Branch came out in the second half and threw a wrinkle at Pleasantville

After forcing Pleasantville to punt on the opening possession of the half West Branch showed its new formation.

The Bears split quarterback Brennan Drew out wide, inserted 220-pound Quin Rocha in the backfield at fullback and had senior Cale Seydel take direct snaps as wildcat quarterback.

Oh and the Bears went no-huddle.

The result was a five-play, 39-yard touchdown drive that took 80 seconds and was capped by a Seydel 3-yard run.

“It was a really good time to pull that out,” Seydel said. “We’d practiced it, we knew it would work and it was effective. I hope we can do it more and more and keep on using it.”

West Branch never stopped using its new formation and Pleasantville (5-4) never found a way to stop it.

The Bears rolled up 266 of their 398 rushing yards in the second half as Seydel, senior Auron Marsh and Dale all rushed for more than 100 yards.

It was the first time in program history West Branch had three 100-yard rushers in the same game.

“The anticipation is fun when there is nothing shown on film yet and you come out and run something new and you know this play has a very high chance of working out,” Marsh said. “It’s really difficult to stop something like that, most teams have one or two runners, especially with us having our quarterback able to run it’s tough to defend. It’s really big for us.”

Pleasantville took its only lead of the game at 14-13 on a 79-yard strike from freshman quarterback Braylon Bingham to Yusef Gulley with 8:33 remaining in the third quarter.

The Trojans got within a point later when Ryder Thill hauled in a tipped heave from Bingham in the endzone for a 33-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-24 play.

West Branch just kept hammering away with the run game from its heavy package and the Trojans had no answer.

“We weren’t going to show it at first but at halftime we had to get some points and we knew that would work,” West Branch senior tackle Logan Wright said. “We came out the second half and went right at them.”

West Branch scored on four consecutive second-half drives before taking a knee at the Trojan 2 yard line on the games final play.

The Bears had 36 offensive plays in the second half, 35 of them were running plays.

“We were doing alright in the first half, our run was a little slow, we were pushing the ball but we needed to do it more efficiently,” Wright said. “We put in our wildcat package and that really set the tone.”

Running behind the offensive line of Cole Crosthwaite, Michael Montgomery, Reese Trepanier, Max Lodge and Wright and Rocha at fullback the Bears averaged rolled up a season-high 398 yards on the ground on Friday.

“I give full credit to the line,” Marsh said. “It was beautiful execution, perfect holes every single time.”

Seydel was the spark in the second half.

The 165-pound senior had 156 of his 160 rushing yards after halftime on 21 second-half carries on direct snaps.

“I always wanted to play quarterback and run the ball,” Seydel said. “I wish I could throw it, Coach won’t let me do that yet so I’ll just keep running it and trust my line and play smashmouth football.”

The teams played to a 7-7 tie in the first half.

West Branch took an early lead when Dale raced 71 yards for a touchdown on a quarterback sneak.

Dale burst through the line and outraced the Pleasantville secondary to the end zone to give West Branch a 7-0 lead with 1:50 remaining in the first quarter.

“I walked up and there was no one over the center and their safeties were away, I don’t know what they saw,” Dale said. “We took advantage of it and I didn’t get hawked down at the end so that’s a good feeling.”

A 47-yard pass from Bingham to Dayson Leerhoff on a third-and-25 play set up a 5-yard Caleb Cook touchdown run on the ensuing Pleasantville possession that tied the game at 7-7.

Bingham threw for 302 yards and two touchdowns but was just 5-of-13 in the second half as West Branch played keep away, allowing the Trojans to run just 19 second-half plays.

“I thought our defense played good, we had some coverage lapses but we knew if we let that kid scramble around and had to cover forever it was going to be hard,” Hierseman said. “He made some plays, he’s a good quarterback especially for a freshman.”

West Branch will learn its second round opponent on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. when the Iowa High School Athletic Association released postseason pairings for the next two rounds.

                                       PLE                WB

First downs                13                    22

Rushes-yards             22-46               51-398

Comp-Att-Int            17-34-0           6-12-0

Passing yards             302                  70

Total yards                348                  468

Punts-avg.                  5-33                 4-37.3

Fumbles-lost              2-1                   1-0

Penalties-yards          4-25                 4-35

Pleasantville              0  7  13   0   –  20

West Branch              7  0  14  14  –  35

WB – Brennen Dale 71 run (Reese Gingerich kick)

PLE – Caleb Cook 4 run (Edwin Escalante kick)

WB – Cale Seydel 3 run (Kick failed)

PLE – Yusef Gulley 79 pass from Braylon Bingham (Escalante kick)

WB – Auron Marsh 7 run (Seydel run)

PLE – Ryder Thill 33 pass from Bingham (Kick failed)

WB – Dale 1 run (Gingerich kick)

WB – Seydel 29 run (Gingerich kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – West Branch: Cale Seydel 22-160, Brennen Dale 10-134, Auron Marsh 18-105, Team 1-(-1). Pleasantville: Caleb Cook 12-24, Braylon Bingham 9-23, Yusef Gulley 1-(-1).

PASSING – West Branch: Brennen Dale 6-12-0 70. Pleasantville: Braylon Bingham 17-34-0 302.

RECEIVING – West Branch: Joe Hamann 2-41, Cale Seydel 2-21, Connor Rios 1-6, Auron Marsh 1-2. Pleasantville: Caleb Cook 6-42, Yusef Gulley 3-111, Dayson Leerhoff 3-87, Ryder Thill 3-51, Trent Jolly 1-7, Owen Rule 1-4.

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