Mac Resetich carries Hall past St. Bede, keeps Red Devils’ playoff hopes alive

PERU – The Hall football team traveled down Route 6 to face rival St. Bede with its back against the wall.

The Red Devils entered needing a win to stay in contention for a playoff spot against the six-win Bruins.

Behind a dominant effort from star Mac Resetich, Hall now has a postseason berth within reach after a 42-27 victory Saturday in a Three Rivers Conference Mississippi Division game.

“It was a must-win situation,” said Resetich, who ran the ball 39 times for 324 yards and six touchdowns and completed 4 of 5 passes for 104 yards. “We’re basically in a playoff situation right now. We can’t lose at all, so obviously it was a big win to get.”

Hall evened its record at 4-4 and will play Bureau Valley (1-7) in Week 9 in Spring Valley.

“It’s huge,” Hall coach Randy Tieman said. “Last week [in a last-second loss to Newman], everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. Against Morrison [an overtime loss in Week 4] where we didn’t recover onside kicks, this team could potentially have been 6-2 right now. We’re not so we’re still fighting to try to get eligible.

“We’re going home for senior night and Bureau Valley is coming in. We’re not going to take them lightly. We’re going to come in Monday and go to work like we do every week.”

On Saturday, Resetich and his counterpart John Brady traded punches early as Resetich raced for a 52-yard touchdown on the third play of the game and Brady countered with a 43-yard TD run on the Bruins’ first drive.

Resetich broke free for an 87-yard touchdown with 7:58 left in the second quarter. The Red Devils then took control of the game in the final minute of the first half.

Resetich scored his third TD of the game on a 7-yard run with 21.4 seconds left.

On St. Bede’s first play, Hall lineman Joel Koch blindsided Brady, knocking the ball loose. Tristen Redcliff recovered to give the Red Devils the ball on St. Bede’s 34-yard line.

Resetich connected with Joe Schrader on Hall’s first play and after spiking the ball to stop the clock, he dropped back to pass but scrambled for an 11-yard TD with 3.1 seconds left to give Hall a 28-8 halftime lead.

“It really helped us going into the break,” Tieman said. “We had a lot of confidence going in [at half]. We knew it still wasn’t over and we still had to keep playing. They’re learning and they’re getting a lot better.”

The Bruins put together a nine-play, 45-yard scoring drive to start the second half, capping it with an 8-yard touchdown pass from Brady to Connor Brown.

However, the Bruins never got closer than 13 points as they couldn’t keep Resetich out of the end zone.

Resetich scored on a 5-yard run, Brady countered with a 1-yard TD run, Resetich responded with a 13-yard scoring run and Brady connected with Ben Wallace for a 17-yard TD pass with 6:32 left before the Red Devils ran out the clock, including Resetich sliding down at the 1 with just over two minutes left.

“We had a horrible first half. We didn’t execute our game plan in any phase,” Eustice said. “We got behind by too many. We figured we’d have to score almost every time we had the ball [in the second half] and we shot ourselves in the foot and didn’t execute after we scored on the first drive and we got behind by too much.”

Resetich now has 1,867 yards and 25 TDs on the ground this season.

Saturday was his second game of more than 400 offensive yards this season, the sixth game he’s rushed for more than 200 yards and the sixth time he’s scored multiple TDs.

“He’s unbelievable,” said Eustice, whose team slipped to 6-2 with its second loss in a row. “He’s as advertised. Credit to coach Tieman and what he’s done with Hall this year. You have to give credit where credit is due, but we thought we had a good game plan, but we didn’t play as physical as we needed to play.”