Fox Falls in Dramatic, Frustrating Defeat at Mehlville

With 4:30 left in the fourth quarter and the game tied at 6, the Mehlville Panthers needed someone on their offense to step up and break the deadlock with the .

And that’s exactly what Panthers senior running back Brandon Zufall did.

Zufall carried the ball eight times for 54 yards on Mehlville’s final drive and punched in the go-ahead touchdown from one yard out with 54 seconds left. Zufall was initially stopped at the 1-yard line, but he spun out of a tackle and reached across the end zone to give the Panthers a 12-6 victory.

“It was supposed to be an outside run,” Zufall said. “I took it outside and I saw a hole, cut back and just drove with my leg. I was hitting every hole that my (offensive) line created. I was just doing what I’ve been taught to do. Hit every hole.”

Mehlville iced its Friday night home win over Suburban West Conference rival Fox by intercepting sophomore quarterback Tyler Thompson’s last-gasp pass attempt. The victory ended the Panthers’ (2-3 overall, 2-3 in the Suburban West Conference) three-game losing skid.

Meanwhile, Fox (0-4 overall, 0-3 in the Suburban West) is still searching for its first win of 2011, and first-year coach Brent Tinker will have to wait another week to try to secure his first victory as Fox’s coach.

“When you start losing, you start second-guessing everything,” Mehlville coach Eric Meyer said. “Even though they stayed pretty positive and worked really hard, it’s just natural for guys to kind of second-guess themselves. And now I think they know that we can do it.”

Mehlville’s defense made several crucial stops throughout the game on third and fourth downs. With less than five minutes left in the fourth quarter, Fox elected to go for it on fourth-and-2. The Panthers defense stood tall, which set up Zufall’s late-game heroics.

“They had field position almost the whole second half,” Meyer said. “We just kept making stop after stop after stop. We put them in bad positions all night offensively. We just couldn’t get anything going until the very end when our offensive line took over.”

Mehlville’s offense struggled to move the ball for most of the night. Senior QB Jeff White completed only three of his 11 pass attempts for 37 yards.

It wasn’t until three minutes into the second quarter that Mehlville got on the board. Junior RB Dwayne Lewis plowed up the middle for a 5-yard rushing touchdown to give the Panthers a 6-3 edge before Zufall’s extra point attempt was blocked.

But the Warriors’ offense, which has scored only one touchdown and 15 total points this season, had just as tough a time trying to move the ball against Mehlville’s defense.

Down 6-3 late in the third quarter, Fox had the ball first-and-goal on the Panthers' 4-yard line. The Warriors were stuffed on three consecutive plays and had to settle for Nick Bartollota’s second field goal of the game.

The red-zone stop was a momentum-changer and had Tinker and the Warriors wondering what could have been after the game.

“The team played very hard,” Tinker said. “We knew it was going to be a hard-fought game. Hats off to them. They had a couple of really big defensive stands and that’s kind of what tonight’s game came down to. They made a few humongous stops.”

Mehlville travels to Marquette next Friday, while Fox will play at Lafayette in Suburban West Conference matchups.