Genoa Comets clinch NBC title share

Nutter runs for 262 yards; recovers 3 fumbles, has INT

10/20/2012
BY DONALD EMMONS
BLADE SPORTS WRITER

GENOA — On a rainy Fri­day night all went right for Genoa.

Espe­cially for se­nior run­ning back Kyle Nut­ter, who made his pres­ence felt per­haps as much as the steady rain­fall in the Comets' 57-7 drub­bing of Ross­ford.

The 5-foot-11, 216-pounder steam­rolled through the Bull­dogs for 262 rush­ing yards on 35 car­ries for four touch­downs to help Genoa se­cure at least a share of the North­ern Buck­eye Con­fer­ence cham­pi­on­ship.

Nut­ter and the rest of the Comets (9-0, 6-0 NBC) did most of their work be­fore half­time as he churned through the Ross­ford de­fense for 209 yards rush­ing on 27 car­ries. Three of those totes ended with him stand­ing in the end zone to help Genoa to a 24-0 half­time ad­van­tage.

"Kyle Nut­ter is a spe­cial tal­ent," Genoa coach Tim Spiess said, of the Comets' work­horse. "He's lit­er­ally a gen­er­a­tion player."

A Genoa of­fen­sive line led by John Belsky, Logan Bryer and Mi­chael Deiter did their part in help­ing Nut­ter run wild. They cre­ated plenty of run­ning lanes and Nut­ter did the rest with power and speed.

"We just ran the ball and kept it go­ing fast," Deiter said,.

The Comets' up-tempo run­ning at­tack led to touch­down runs of 13, 1, 4, and 7 yards for Nut­ter, who also com­pleted 2 of 3 pass at­tempts for 58 yards.

"The run­ning was def­i­nitely work­ing and in these kind of games you're go­ing to have to run the foot­ball," Nut­ter said. "Our of­fen­sive line did a re­ally good job and there were def­i­nitely some seams to work with and all the backs ran re­ally well. Offen­sively I think we did re­ally well."

Nut­ter, who also had an in­ter­cep­tion and re­cov­ered three Ross­ford fum­bles, went out in his fi­nal reg­u­lar-sea­son home game look­ing to make the most of the mo­ment.

"I just tried to get to the ball and be part of all the plays be­cause you never know what could hap­pen," Nut­ter said. "You've got to be ready for any­thing."

Nut­ter gave the Comets a 7-0 lead when he scored his first touch­down with 6:15 to play in the open­ing quar­ter.

He set up Genoa's next scor­ing op­por­tu­nity when he in­ter­cepted a Ryan Clay pass near mid­field. It led to place­kicker Cody Pick­ard fin­ish­ing off Genoa's sec­ond scor­ing drive by boot­ing a 42-yard field goal to make it 10-0 .

Then Nut­ter came through by re­cov­er­ing a Ross­ford drive-end­ing fum­ble at the Comets’ 10-yard line.

The Comets took the pos­ses­sion and marched 90 yards with Nut­ter fin­ish­ing off the pos­ses­sion with a one-yard run to make it 17-0.

He found his way into the end zone with a three-yard run with 26 sec­onds left in the half for a 24-0 edge.

Even though the Comets ap­peared in to­tal con­trol with still a half to play, Nut­ter's night wasn't quite com­plete. He scored his fourth TD early in the third quar­ter and played some stout de­fense at his line­backer spot.

The Bull­dogs (5-4, 3-3) even­tu­ally put to­gether a scor­ing drive mid­way through the third quar­ter.

Ross­ford quar­ter­back Ryan Clay con­nected with Ian Sto­lar for a 23-yard touch­down pass to make it 31-7. Sto­lar led the Bull­dogs with 50 yards rush­ing on 12 car­ries and three catches for 18 yards. Clay com­pleted 7 of 18 passes for 54 yards.

Con­tact Don­ald Em­mons at:dem­mons@the­blade.com,419-724-6302 or onTwit­ter @Dem­monsBlade.