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North Andover has Salem seeing red

Saturday, October, 03 By Chuck Frye
Staff writer

NORTH ANDOVER — In the second half last night, Salem did a nice job of adjusting to shadow standout North Andover running back Zac Iovanella, holding the senior to just 28 yards on 11 carries.

However, Iovanella’s damage was already done and several other Scarlet Knight weapons were inflicted on the reeling Witches defense. Battering the Northeastern Conference foe with 378 yards of offense, North Andover easily prevailed, 34-12, at Walsh Stadium.

“I was very, very satisfied with our offensive flow,” said Scarlet Knight head coach John Rafferty. “We weren’t perfect, we still made some mistakes, but we made a lot less than we have in previous games.”

With sophomore quarterback Brendan Walsh triggering the attack and Rafferty moving Iovanella around to get him into open space, North Andover was hard to stop. Iovanella did his best imitation of Indianapolis Colts running back Joseph Addai on his disciplined stretch runs to the edges, finishing with 103 yards on the ground on 25 carries and a touchdown. Hulking tackles Alex Blane and Manny Williams led the way for many of Iovanella’s forays.

But put No. 26 as a slot receiver and the Scarlet Knights (now 3-1) really flew. Behind Walsh’s best passing effort of the season (11 of 19, 244 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions), Iovanella had four receptions for 120 yards, many coming on deft runs after short tosses, and a pair of TDs.

"When Zac’s productive, everybody’s doing their job,” Rafferty said. “It’s a great thing.”

And others got into the act. Elusive junior David Foote ran effective comeback routes to blast off for 108 yards and a touchdown on five catches. Even junior tight end Mike Weisman got into the act with a pair of catches including an 8-yard snag for six points.

"We really don’t anticipate one way or another whether we’ll run or pass,” Rafferty explained. “If we can be balanced, we will. But we take what the other team gives us. If we have an opportunity to take advantage of a certain situation, we’ll try to do that whether by running the ball or throwing.”

Defensively, the Knights did a great job of keeping Salem off balance. Weisman had a key interception when the Witches were driving to create a one-possession game late in the first half. Junior John Hufzinger snared an errant pass that set up a third-quarter North Andover touchdown. Defensive back Foote swatted away a pair of passes and Iovanella had three tackles for negative yardage.

"If we tackled better, we probably would have (shut them out),” said Rafferty. “But our goals (last night) were to cut down on our mistakes (no fumbles, 58-percent third-down conversion rate, holding Salem to 2 of 11 on third downs), becoming more efficient and functioning better as a unit. I think we did better with these.”