CUBA — Perryville ended its tumultuous regular season on a high note Friday night with a 27-20 win over Cuba on the road.
After finding themselves down 6-0 early, the Pirates were led on offense by Joshua Greamaud, who took direct snaps in the wildcat formation throughout the night, finishing the game with all four of the Pirates touchdowns. Three of Gremaud’s touchdowns were on the ground, with one on a reception from backup quarterback Nolan Behrle, who earned his first win as a starter since coming in for the injured Lucas Buchheit.
The Pirates hung on to the lead throughout the second half, though they dealt with special teams errors that kept the game closer than head coach Brent Roth said he would have liked.
“[The wildcat formation] was working for us, so we just kind of kept that going the rest of the game,” Roth said. “We made a couple of special teams errors. Where we probably should have punted we gave them an opportunity to score going into halftime, so we kind of gave them the score there. Then late in the game we fumbled a punt return and gave them a chance to tie it up at the end of the game. But our defense was able to get a stop at the game and finish it off. So overall, we played a really good game. We just made too many mistakes and allowed Cuba to kind of hang around in the game too long.”
Gremaud finished the game with 173 rushing yards on 15 carries, averaging nearly 12 yards per carry. Jasper Burress-Johnson contributed to the run game as well, with 85 yards on 10 carries.
Gremaud led the receiving game as well, with 43 yards on 3 receptions. Behrle also found Xyzavier Wilson 3 times for 41 yards, and Bryce Weber twice for 17 yards.
The Pirates finished the regular season with a record of 4-5, down from last year’s record of 6-3. Roth said this year was a bit of a down year as far as the regular season goes, but he is still confident his team can make a run in the playoffs.
“We’ve had some disappointing moments this year, but the nice thing about the playoffs in Missouri is your record doesn’t matter,” he said. “So as we roll into the playoffs, it is win or go home. I still think that we haven’t played our best football at this point. So, if we go out and do that in the next few weeks, I think we have good chances of winning this district. That’s our mindset, to get this thing rolling and try to go out and be champions. And just keep this season going for as long as we can for these seniors.”
The playoffs will start at home for the Pirates, as they host Fredericktown, a team they beat 16-0 in week one. The Pirates had all their starters at that point, but Roth said even with the toll injuries have taken, he believes they can beat the Blackcats a second time.
“You have the confidence that we’ve already beat this Fredericktown team before,” he said. Even though we’re young we now have nine games under our belt so we’ve essentially played a whole season of varsity football. There’s no reason to use the young excuse anymore, we have experience. So just being confident in ourselves and going out and trying to limit the mistakes we had last week, so that we can play mistake free football and make Fredericktown beat us rather than us beating ourselves.”
Roth said he believes if the team can perform better in the red zone and come away with more points at the end of drives, which was a shortcoming in the early season win against the Blackcats, the Pirates should be in a good position to put the game away and move on.
Kickoff against Fredericktown is scheduled for 7 p.m. this Friday night at Pirate stadium in Perryville.
