The direction of a game can change in the blink of the eye. Just ask the Hempfield Black Knights.

 

A week after watching several leads disappear in a 56-52 loss to Cedar Crest, the Knights (3-2, 3-5) scored a pair of touchdowns just 22 seconds apart on their way to a 35-21 win [box score] over Ephrata on Friday night at War Memorial Field.

 

The game-changing sequence occurred with 4:27 left in the second quarter, after Ephrata's Tim Murray tied the game at 7 on a five-yard touchdown run. On the ensuing kickoff, Hempfield senior Austin Sensening broke six tackles on his way to an 84-yard touchdown.

 

Down 14-7, Murray was drilled by Anthony Delgiorno on the kickoff return and lost the ball, giving the Knights possession at Ephrata 30. On the next play, Michael Murr hit Treavon Hinton for 25 yards to set up a five-yard touchdown run by Joe Gamble, giving Hempfield a 21-7 lead with 4:05 to go in the half.

 

"That was a huge momentum swing. It got our guys excited and I think it took a little wind out of Ephrata," Hempfield head coach Ron Zeiber said. "To score two times that quickly gave us a little breathing room and allowed us to just be concerned with running our offense."

 

Hempfield jumped out a to 7-0 lead in the first quarter, surprising Ephrata by recovering an onside kick to open the game. Starting at the Ephrata 40, the Black Knights needed seven plays to score on Murr's five-yard run.

 

"That was three short fields we gave them and those were the three scores (in the first half)," Ephrata head coach Jim Vieland said. "That's a big phase of the game and they capitalized on the short fields. You have to give them credit for that."

 

On their opening drive of the second half, the Knights quickly moved into Ephrata territory before Gamble fumbled the ball away at the Mounts' 36. Ephrata (0-5, 0-8) went to work and aided by a pair of Hempfield penalties, pieced together a 17-play, 64-yard drive. Senior Alex Pstrak finished it with a three-yard touchdown run to cut the Hempfield lead to 21-14.

 

"That was big, you want to control the ball and get first downs, especially against an offense like Hempfield's," Vieland said. "But we need to stop them on defense on the flip side of that, and that's sort of been something we haven't been able to do all year, really."

 

The Knights ran a one-two punch of Gamble and Murr at the Ephrata defense, churning out 356 yards on the ground.

 

"We thought their defense was playing really wide on us so we felt we need to run up inside of that," Zeiber said. "We were running our inside zone plays and sometimes having Murr pull it out of there and heading the other direction as a little bit of a counter to that."

 

Gamble finished with 207 yards and two touchdowns on 28 carries, eclipsing the 1,000-yard mark for the season on a 48-yard run late in the first quarter. Murr also had a pair of touchdowns, rushing for 119 yards on 18 carries.

 

For Ephrata, Murray had 80 yards on eleven carries and four catches for 46 yards. The Mounts' Jeremy Franck hit Kevin Sollenberger for a 22-yard touchdown with 7:33 left to pull Ephrata within 28-21.