No Surprise: Xavier Football Whallops Amity 49-7 Leaving No Place to Go But Up

The Southern Connecticut Conference schedule maker certainly doesn’t have many, if any, friends on the Amity football team. For the second year in a row, the Spartans faced three of the state’s top 10- teams during the first month of the season. First came eighth-ranked West Haven, which opened the season by defeating Amity 28-14. After a breather against East Haven (which the Spartans won 47-8), the Black and Gold got pasted by fifth-ranked Hand (40-7). On Thursday night, undefeated Xavier ( 4-0 and the No. 1 team in the latest state poll) added insult to injury by whacking the Spartans, 49-7 at Palmer Field in Middletown. After going through that meat grinder, the 1-3 Spartans are now preparing for Friday’s 7 p.m. Sim Field home contest against Hamden. While the Green Dragons are 0-4, two weeks ago, they lost to West Haven by only a lone point (32-31).

According to Amity Coach Bert Mozealous, “Xavier is top shelf—the real deal. My guys told me that they felt Xavier was better than Hand and I agree with them. When we played Hand, I thought we played poorly, especially in the second quarter and gave the game to them. We played hard against Xavier but they took the game from us. When we stopped their running game, they threw the ball over us. When we stopped their passing game, they ran through and around us.”

Thanks to sturdy defensive play by the Falcons, he Spartans went nowhere on their first possession of the night and they booted the ball away on fourth down. Three plays later, Amity defensive back Cody Ellison picked off a pass by Xavier quarterback Pat D’Amato at the Falcon 47-yard line. Slowly but surely, Amity QB Tyler Vallie led his team down to the Xavier eight. On third down, he was sacked by Falcon line backer Sean Marinan (son  of Xavier coach Sean Marinan and a 2010 All Stater). Fourth and goal from the Xavier 15, Vallie’s throw into the end zone was incomplete. The throw was released in haste as Xavier’s Ryan Craig put heavy pressure on Vallie and forced him to release the ball sooner than he had wanted.

Three plays after regaining possession at its own 15, Xavier gave the ball to Kris Luster at his 30. He shot through the Spartan defense and raced 70 yards for the game’s first touchdown. It came with 6 minutes, 30 seconds gone in the game.

On its next possession, Amity faced a fourth-and 23 situation after Vallie was dumped for a big loss by Tom Harrington. Back up punter Damon Robinson dropped back to boot the ball away but the snap was low and off to his right. He chased down the errant snap but was swarmed on by the Xavier defense as Robinson tried in desperation to get off the punt. Setting up shop at the Amity 29, D’Amato wasted no time hitting Ryan Jacobucci  with a scoring strike that made it 14-0.

Three minutes later, Xavier added its third score of the opening session as Jacobucci gathered in another throw from D’Amato and shredded the Amity defense for a 70 yard TD. Leading 21-0, the Falcons added a pair of second quarter scores to walk off with a commanding 35-0 halftime lead. Jacobucci ripped off his third score of the first half, a 72 yard romp into the end zone and 2010 All State running back Mike Mastrioanni added a four yard run.

Xavier tacked on a pair of second half scores as Mastrioanni capped an 89 yard march with one yard plunge into the end zone.  The Falcons’ reserve quarterback Tim Boyle closed out the scoring with a 37 yard TD toss to Ryan Murphy.

Trailing 49-0 Amity finally got onto the scoreboard and ruined the Falcons’ shut out bid when Vallie cashed in a 10 yard run with 1:31 left in the game.

“Xavier was throwing the ball right to the end of the game and they went for a 2-point conversion when they were ahead 40-0,” Mozealous said. “Even though he was under heavy defensive pressure throughout the game, I thought Tyler had a good game.”

While completing only four of his 20 passes for a mere 53 yards, Vallie did pick up 59 yards on 14 carries. Amity ended up with only 73 yards on the ground.

Mozealous added, “My guys worked hard and tried to show improvement, but all in all, it was a long., tough night for us. Our offensive line had a lot of trouble blocking the Xavier defense as they were coming at us with more guys that we could handle. They have an experienced football team, with five or six veteran guys on each side of the ball, back from last year’s state championship team and their experience really showed.”

 “Now that these three games against Top 10 teams are behind us, I hope we can generate some offense against the six teams we still have to face. Except for the normal bruises, we are not too banged up. We’re pretty much intact and looking forward to playing the rest of our games. Going into the West Haven, Hand, and Xavier games we knew we had to play without making any mistakes and hope those teams made some mistakes.  At times, we were playing four sophomores against Xavier’s first stringers. Now, we’ve played four games and should know what to do on both sides of the ball. We’re not young and inexperienced any more. It’s time for my guys to step it up a notch.”