Piper scores statement win over Blanche Ely to prove legitimacy, continue unbeaten start
There’s no asterisk next to Piper’s undefeated start to the 2024 season anymore.
The Bengals used homecoming as their coming out party, announcing that they’re for real with a gut-check 21-20 victory over Blanche Ely on Friday night.
Junior defensive back Alex Gammage sealed Piper’s first 5-0 start with an interception off backup Tigers quarterback Gary Hadley on the game’s final play, thrilling the home faithful and making amends for a costly mistake just a few minutes before.
“Huge play,” said first-year Piper head coach Quentin Short, who has transformed Piper from a perma-.500 program to a contender in just a few months.
“He busted a coverage on the touchdown and then he makes up for it, gets a game sealing interception. So hats off to him for coming back and making up for a mistake he had earlier. Great job. He’s a great athlete.”
That touchdown Short referenced was a 25-yard miracle from Hadley to Michael Warren with 3:47 left on the clock. Ely (3-2) was down a touchdown before the score, and Tigers coach Terence McFadden had no interest in overtime.
The Tigers went for two, but Hadley -- who learned he would start in place of a concussed Omari McNeal Friday morning -- couldn’t convert.
The play was designed to go to Ely’s slot receiver; Hadley threw it to the back of the end zone.
“It’s on me. We could have tied the game up with the [extra point],” McFadden said. “But the end of the day, we trust our guys, you know, they wanted to go for it.”
Still, the game wasn’t over. Ely’s defense forced a three-and-out, and took over on a short field with 92 seconds left. But Hadley tried too hard on the Tigers’ final play, throwing directly to Gammage across his body instead of tucking and running out of bounds.
“I knew our defense was going to get the stop,” said Piper quarterback Christian Mata, who had a touchdown passing and a touchdown rushing Friday. “I trust them, and I knew they were going to make a play. He did. He got the pick, we take a knee and we got the win.”
A monumental win that announced Piper as a real contender in Broward County in Short’s first year after bringing his staff over from Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
Asked what he would have said in the offseason if someone had told him that the Bengals would start the season 5-0, he replied: ”In the spring? I would have said hell no. But we improved so much over the summer from where we were in the spring. So when we started this season and I saw the first half of how we played against [Cardinal] Gibbons in the Kickoff Classic, I knew we had a shot.
“I really did. I knew we had a shot to be good, but I knew everyone was going to doubt us because of our schedule. But, you know, we answered the bell tonight.”
Piper feasted on Deerfield Beach, Somerset Prep, South Plantation, and Coral Springs the first four weeks of the regular season, shutting out all four inferior opponents, but not winning over many skeptics in the process.
That will start to change now -- even if McFadden didn’t want to give Piper its flowers immediately after the game.
“We’re a way better football team; we’re a way better football team,” he said. “We just lost. We didn’t execute, we didn’t execute in every phase of the game. It’s on the coaches too.”