WALES — Its offense already having a terrific game running the ball, the Oak Hill High School football team finished off its victory over Lisbon with a dominant drive that lasted over seven minutes. The Raiders not only capped their 33-14 victory with that 14-play, 70-yard drive, they may have wrapped up the No. 2 seed in the Western D regional tournament.
Oak Hill, which rushed for 311 yards Saturday, ends the regular season 6-2 and likely jumped over Lisbon for the second-seed in the conference tournament. Lisbon is also 6-2.
“We knew where we were going, and Coach (Stacen Doucette) had us running the perfect plays and our line made plays for us,” said Oak Hill running back Alex Mace, who rushed for 42 yards on the drive and finished with 152.
Oddly, as dominant as their running game was, the Raiders capped their long drive with a passing touchdown. The drive, which started with 9 minutes, 13 seconds left in the fourth quarter, nearly stalled at the Lisbon 14. Oak Hill was facing 4th and 6 when quarterback Parker Asselin completed a 14-yard TD pass to a wide open Ryan Stevens. Adam Merrill kicked the extra point to push Oak Hill’s lead to 33-14 with 2:10 left in the game.
“We decided we were going to rely on the seniors and that’s what we did,” Doucette said. “Parker was calling the plays, Luke (Washburn) was blocking and Ryan caught the big pass in the end zone.”
Lisbon had closed to within 12 points when Joe Philbrick scored his second touchdown of the game on a 1-yard run with 9:26 left. That followed a 51-yard TD run by Mace, which had put the Raiders up 26-6 less than two minutes into the fourth quarter.
Oak Hill was dominant on both sides of the ball in the first half. After fumbling the opening kickoff, Oak Hill forced Lisbon to punt and drove 73 yards and took the lead when Asselin hit Washburn with a 7-yard TD pass.
The Greyhounds, who played without playmaker Quincy Thompson (elbow injury) ran just six plays in the second quarter. Mace had a strip sack on Lisbon quarterback Kyle Bourget and Washburn (who had a sack on the previous play) recovered the fumble to end Lisbon’s only drive of the second quarter.
“We practiced really hard this week and we worked on defense a lot this week,” Flaherty said.
Oak Hill stretched its lead to 20-7 in the second quarter on a pair of touchdowns by Mace. Philbrick got Lisbon on the board in the third quarter with a 1-yard run.
Scott Martin — 621-5618
smartin@centralmaine.com
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