Titus McCoy leads Center Grove to 6A title over Penn

One more. One more win. One more championship.

The Center Grove football team rallied around that motto all year. With more than eight minutes left in the Class 6A high school state finals against Penn on Saturday night, the top-ranked Trojans needed one more drive.

“Just business as usual,” Center Grove quarterback Joey Siderewicz said. “We just went out and pushed it down the field.”

The Trojans marched 77 yards in 14 plays, eating up nearly seven minutes. Titus McCoy bulled into the end zone for a 1-yard fourth-down touchdown to seal Center Grove’s 28-16 win at Lucas Oil Stadium. It was the second state championship in program history for the Trojans, the first coming under coach Eric Moore in 2008.

On the way to a 14-0 season, Center Grove knocked off teams ranked No. 2, No. 3, No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 (twice) in the 6A Associated Press poll, in addition to beating defending state champion Ben Davis. Saturday’s win was sort of a Center Grove prototype under Moore: get the lead, play strong defense and run the ball.

“The game was sort of put in our lap of what we do best,” said Moore, in his 16th season at Center Grove. “We didn’t have to score 40 points or throw it around a whole lot. We were prepared to, but we were a very patient, focused team. Four yards, five yards, six yards. Let’s not get greedy.”

Penn (12-2), as expected, was a better team than it was in its most-recent state finals appearance, a 54-0 loss to Carmel in 2011. When Penn quarterback Camden Bohn scored on a 10-yard run with 8:38 left, the Kingsmen trailed 21-16 and needed just one stop to get the ball back  for a chance to win.

But that’s easier said than done against a Center Grove team that answered every punch with a counter all season. Usually that counter came in the form of the 5-foot-10-inc, 185-pound McCoy twisting, turning and breaking tackles.

On Center Grove’s game-clinching drive, McCoy carried on 10 of the 13 plays. On a 21-yard run to the Penn 17, McCoy started inside off the right guard, spun back to his left and up the sideline. Along the way, he was touched by eight different Penn defenders before he was brought to the turf.

“He’s fun to watch,” Siderewicz said of McCoy. “He makes it easier on all of us.”

The ball sat at Penn’s 1-yard-line with 1:47 left and the Kingsmen called the first of their three timeouts. Center Grove, facing fourth down, could have kicked a chip shot field goal to push its lead to eight points.

No chance. McCoy ran behind Jovan Swann and Cameron Tidd, standout defensive lineman playing on short-yardage offensive situations, and into the end zone. McCoy got some help from his teammates, including Tidd, who came back around and helped push the running back past the goal line.

“The offensive line opened the holes,” said McCoy, who finished with 193 yards on 27 carries and three touchdowns. “I just did the running.”

Tyler Pence’s interception with 52 seconds left sealed the win and started the celebration for the Trojans.

“The senior leadership was amazing throughout this whole year,” McCoy said. “It feels awesome to be able to send them out with a blue ring.”

Penn’s Bohn, a 6-foot-5-inch, 225-pound Harvard recruit, showed some moxie to keep Penn in the game. After Center Grove jumped on top 14-0 on a 38-yard run by McCoy and 6-yard pass from Siderewicz to Triston Clark, Penn methodically moved the ball 76 yards in 16 plays and pulled to 14-3 on a 21-yard field goal by Samuel Scholtes.

Penn took the second half kickoff and marched 77 yards in six-plus minutes, cutting Center Grove’s lead to 14-10 on a 15-yard pass from Bohn to James Iapalucci.

But Penn was unable to stop Center Grove. The Trojans went eight plays in 80 yards, going ahead 21-10 with 2:19 left in the third quarter on a 1-yard run by McCoy.

Bohn, who passed for 139 yards and rushed for 77, led another touchdown drive to make the score  21-16. But after his 2-point conversion run came up short, he never got the ball back with a chance to win it.

“It wasn’t the outcome we wanted, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort,” Penn coach Cory Yeoman said. “Give the Center Grove kids credit.”

The 14-0 record wasn’t something Moore and his team talked about. There wasn’t time. Not with state-ranked teams on the schedule almost every week.

“We didn’t make a big deal of being undefeated all year,” Moore said. “We’re sort of a bunch of nerds. We just hung out together and played football.”

At the end of the night, it was one more victory in the win column. One more state title for Center Grove.

Etc.
Saturday’s attendance was 25,402 for a two-day state finals total of 42,666. It was the lowest number by a slight margin since the Indiana High School Association went to six classes in 2013. Attendance was 43,985 in 2013 and 44,503 in 2014.

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649. Follow him on Twitter: @KyleNeddenriep.